Whenever Tripoli phoned, their conversations were abrupt.“I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now,” she would say and slip off the line. When he came to the trailer to see her, she kept him at the door. Most of the time she just sat slumped at the kitchen table staring out the window, lost in thought.
“I’m just not up to seeing anybody these days,” she told Rosie, who kept banging on her trailer door until she finally opened up.
“Molly, darling,” she said, managing to barrel her way in. “We need to talk.”
“Sure,” she said, “but just not right now.”
“You’ve got to stop whipping yourself. Nobody's blaming you.”
“Maybe, but I am.”
Larry called a few times. To apologize, to commiserate, to plead with Molly to come back while she waited for Daniel to turn up again.
“You got to keep busy in the meanwhile. Keep yourself occupied until they find him,” he said.“Just like you did before.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, “but no thanks.” Nothing could have been further from Molly's mind than the magazine.
Tripoli kept coming by every day, hoping to pull Molly back into life, but she scarcely seemed to hear what he was saying.
“I’m getting really worried about her,” Rosie confided in Tripoli when Molly locked her out of the trailer, speaking to her only with the chain on the door—and then but briefly.“She says she can’t face anybody, but this…this is scary.”
“I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t listen to Rosie, I didn’t even listen to my own boy,” said Molly as Tripoli stood outside in the drizzle insisting that she accept a soggy bag of groceries.
Each time Tripoli went shopping, he discovered that food prices had leaped upward, some items nearly doubling in a week. And it was not only the breads and cereals directly impacted by the failure of the grain crop, but meat and fish, dependent on feeds, were rising dramatically. Fruit and fresh vegetables were now essentially out of reach for working families. Tripoli couldn’t even find a bag of sugar in Wegman's, and he suspected that people were beginning to hoard basic supplies—which would only magnify the problem. And, as he stood in the rain hoping that Molly would accept the package, he kept hearing in his mind the voices of the books. It was as if the spirit of Anterra was addressing him across the ages, urging him to action. Do something. But do what? Was it too late?
In town there was a swirl of speculation about Daniel. He was out there alone in the woods with no one to turn to and nothing to eat. It was only a matter of time until he was dead—if he hadn’t already succumbed to the drenching rains and hypothermia.
“And that boy knew something really important,” said Howie Schultz, the postal carrier, as he stood under his umbrella sorting mail into the boxes that served the trailer park. “Something that could have stopped all this. Just look at how it's been raining. The wife's really scared. First that heat. Then these rains. I mean, what's the world coming to?”
“She drove him away!” said Mrs. Dolph bitterly, as she waited in the downpour for Howie to get to her social security check.“Some mother!”
“First she has the old man killed,” remarked Mrs. Lifsey to her bridge circle, “then she chases away her poor little boy. For the second time!”
One morning, Molly looked out the window to see heaps of garbage dumped in her front yard. Often, when she answered the phone, she was greeted by the click of someone hanging up. Other times, anonymous voices cursed and threatened her. “You’re not fit to be a mother!” hissed one female voice.“When he comes back, if he ever comes back,” shouted an angry man, “I hope to hell the authorities take him away from you.”
Molly knew that they were right, that she was to blame, and so she kept those messages of anger and hate, dutifully recording them in her journal.
After the rains finally tapered off, there was an early hard frost in October and Molly finally ventured outside. Standing in front of her trailer, she stared down at the remains of Daniel's neglected garden. Oozing tomatoes hung on withered vines, desiccated bean plants shivered in the wind. When she poked her hands into the soil, she pulled up sodden potatoes, half-rotten. This is all that remains of Danny, she thought, kneeling in the mud. This and memories.
Molly spent her time wandering the nearby hills, following familiar paths, every step reminding her of Danny. Day slid into meaningless day, time losing all definition as the trees turned barren, the fields and meadows took on mournful shades of gray and brown, and the sky, grim and low, cloaked the sun. Gone were the summer wild flowers; and Danny, too. How little it might have taken to keep Danny, she kept telling herself. Now he was out in the wilderness, alone, this time with no one to care for him or shield him from the brutality of this unforgiving climate.
“Since the day that Danny was born and Chuck deserted us,” she wrote in her journal,“I’ve been so caught up in paying bills and going back to school, that I’ve never had—or allowed myself—the chance to stop and look up at a cloud, stand at night and stare up at the stars. Being productive does not always require running around in busy circles. Sometimes a person just needs to take a deep breath, stand still, and contemplate. Here was a little boy living with me, trying to teach his mother a little common sense. Was I always such a slow learner?”
One evening the phone rang, and Molly let it ring. When the answering machine picked up and she recognized Sandy's voice on the other end, she took the call.
“How are you doing, Molly?” Sandy inquired.
“Not so great, as you can imagine,” she answered. “How are things at Larry's?”
It turned out that Sandy was no longer with the magazine. Molly was surprised.
“Apparently you haven’t heard. After you left, things just fell apart.”
There were cost overruns in printing the October edition, egregious editorial mistakes that never got caught, pages that were bound out of order. And creditors were suddenly demanding payment up front. Larry had apparently been living on the edge, and hiring the new people had pushed him into insolvency.
“It was as if the magazine were cursed,” Sandy said. “First he fired the new people he had hired to replace you. Then he laid off Tasha. Then me. Finally Ben. I still can’t believe how fast everything unraveled.”
Larry Pierce had closed the doors to the magazine and filed for bankruptcy. The attorney handling the case was Alex Greenhut, by chance the same lawyer who had helped Molly obtain food stamps and welfare when she had been at the low point in her own life. From what Sandy had heard, Greenhut had tried his best to protect Larry, but there was no way to appease the creditors who were crying for blood. Not only was the magazine out of business, but Larry, as a result of his personal guarantees, was utterly ruined. Broke. In the end, he couldn’t even pay his lawyer's bill.
Molly had some savings but she refused to touch them. She was keeping them for when Danny came back. It was getting colder and the propane company was now refusing to deliver gas until her bills were paid. She failed to pay the rent, and let the car insurance lapse. Whatever it took, Molly was determined to hang on, wait for Danny, ignore the angry stares and denunciations of her neighbors, hold out as long as she could.
Tripoli was persistent. Every evening, without fail, he appeared at Molly's place. Sometimes during the day, when he was near the east end of the city, he’d think of her and drive over to the trailer park. When Molly finally relented and let him in, he sat with her, sometimes for hours, asking nothing, just quietly holding her hand.
“I don’t deserve your love,” she murmured, head bowed and unable to look him in the eye.“I never did. You’re wasting it on me. Find someone else. Someone who’ll make you happy.”
He collected the garbage scattered across her lawn, straightened up the kitchen, and cooked her dinner.
“How can you ever forgive me, Trip?” she asked, “For not believing you, not trusting you.”
“There's nothing to forgive,” he said, holding her fragile frame tight. Throu
gh her thick sweater he could feel her ribs and verte-brae.“I only hope and pray that you can stop punishing yourself.”
Some days were better, some decidedly worse. On the nights that threatened to be bad, Tripoli slept over, holding her close and kissing away her tears.
“What would I do without you?” she asked.
“Why don’t you come to my place? Live with me,” he gently urged.
“I can’t. I can’t leave here. Not until the day they evict me—and then they’re going to have to drag me out bodily.”
Tripoli offered to pay her rent and was secretly relieved when she refused. The sooner she was out of that place of misery, he believed, the better.
The arrival of November was greeted by bitter cold and snow, promising another harsh winter.
“Sometimes I dream about living in a warm climate,” she said, shivering on a particularly frigid night. She was rationing heat, and by evening she was so chilled that even in bed with piles of blankets and Tripoli holding her she couldn’t warm up.“It's so dreadful here. So hostile.”
Tripoli thought about the tropics. He recalled his flight down to Sarasota to meet Matthew's old teacher, remembered the myriad of aquamarine pools, the endless miles of paved highways, the shopping malls and the fast-food joints. “It's really beautiful here, if you just open your eyes and look around. The summer and winter, it's all part of a greater whole. Daniel saw what it was and loved it. He wanted us to love it, too.”
She stared at him in the darkness. How different he sounded these days, how different from that down-to-earth detective she had first met in her trailer the night Danny disappeared from daycare. Then she thought about Kute Kids. Mrs. Oltz, long dead. Cheryl, who had locked poor little Danny in the basement. The magazine. It now all seemed like a couple of lifetimes ago. How could she have been so insensitive? So stubborn? So utterly deaf and blind?
In her journal, Molly revisited each and every error she had made since the moment she had spotted Danny wandering up the road back toward her trailer. If only it were possible to move back in time, she thought going back through the densely covered pages of her notebook. If only retracing her steps were as simple as this, how differently she would have handled everything. Might have. But then some fools never learn from their mistakes.
Secretly, Molly harbored the dream that one day she would look out the window and there would be Danny, just as before, bouncing happily up the road, a coarse wool sweater tossed over his shoulder. But it was just that, she knew, a dream. People didn’t get second chances.
chapter twenty-three
That same day in September when Daniel disappeared, the books had vanished, too. Tripoli had come home late that night, exhausted and soaked to the bone, and noticed immediately that the books were missing from the kitchen table. All that remained were scattered dishes and crumbs, his pile of notes encircling the spot where the volumes had rested for weeks. Until now, he had never had anything of value in the house and hadn’t even bothered locking the door. He kept kicking himself for being so lax. Why would anybody want to steal them? he wondered. Ultimately, when Matlin finally caught on that he had taken the books from the evidence room, there would be hell to pay. An independent investigator appointed by the governor was questioning everybody in town about the disappearance of the Hermit's body, and the books would be the next point of investigation. The noose was tightening. To hell with them, he thought. What could they do to him? In the grander scheme of things, measured against the wider flow of human events, their inquiry and his life were of minute significance.
For Molly's sake, Tripoli pushed on with the search, but his heart was no longer really in it. It was history repeating itself, Watertown revisited. Even if Daniel was still alive, he certainly would not be coming back. Wasn’t it only once in a generation that people had a chance at enlightenment?
Tripoli returned to his regular routine as a city detective, focusing on the cases assigned to him. In his off time, he started working on his house again, though he wasn’t quite sure why. He finished renovating the downstairs bathroom and began insulating and sheet-rocking the master bedroom upstairs. He replaced the worst of the leaky windows, weather-stripped the exterior doors, and then made the barn tight for the approaching winter so the animals would have adequate shelter from the wind.
On a Thursday night, one of the young goats disappeared. It looked as if it had broken free through the fence, and after that Tripoli kept the animals confined to the barn until he had time to reinforce the enclosure. From a neighbor, he bought enough hay to last the winter and hauled heavy sacks of cracked corn and wheat out from town.
A week before Thanksgiving, Molly's telephone service was cut and the power company sent her a final warning. Even by stretching it, she now had barely enough propane to last a week.
“You can’t live like this,” said Tripoli as she sat in her kitchen huddled in blankets.
“Danny,” was all Molly could utter.“My sweet Danny.”
“He's fine,” murmured Tripoli. “He's free. And he's where he wants to be. I know it. I just know it in my heart.”
“If only,” she said, biting her lip,“if only…”
Finally, Tripoli got Molly to agree to move out to his house. Her sudden willingness to leave the trailer took him by surprise. He came with a carload of empty cartons he had scavenged from the supermarkets and helped her pack her belongings. They boxed up all of Daniel's clothes. His favorite books. The microscope that Larry had given him. Then Tripoli helped her sort through the rest.
“Leave this,” he said, stuffing things back into drawers.“And this. I got plenty of egg beaters. And who needs more can openers? This broom is shot. And forget this vacuum—maybe the next people can use it. Anyway, I got two.” Molly didn’t really care one way or the other. She just wanted to be certain they took all of Daniel's things. It took him a couple of trips to move everything; then he brought Molly out to the old farm house in Newfield.
“This is your home now,” he said as he led her in through the kitchen door.
It was the first time she had ever been there. He took her upstairs.“I’ve got two bedrooms finished,” he explained, showing her around. The place smelled of fresh paint and spackle.“You can have your own if you want. I’d understand. You could take the bigger one.” He opened the door for her.“The only trouble is that the good bathroom is downstairs. I haven’t begun to work on this one yet.”
Molly walked around dumbstruck, gaping up at the high ceilings, running her hand over the newly refinished chestnut staircase. It was smooth and sleek. Compared to her place, everything here seemed bright and polished. The effort he had gone to, she realized, had been for her. Finally she found words. “Thank you. You’re a good man,” she said, looking him deep in the eye for the first time since Daniel had vanished. “And you’ve always been. Putting up with me like you’ve done…”
“No…” he said waving away the compliment though it felt genuine and good.“Nah…”
“It's going to be a real downer having a lead weight like me swinging around your neck.”
“Sure, you’re a pain in the ass,” he said, pulling her to him with a smile. “But let's face it, you’re going to be living with a dumb, depressed cop. Hey, I got a great idea! We can just depress the hell out of each other. I mean really get into it.”
Molly had to smile. Then, in a more serious vein, she added, “Any time it gets to be too much and you feel like you want me to move, I want you to be truthful and just tell me.”
“And we’ll find you a nice trailer in the back of that park. Hey, come on now. This is for keeps.”
He showed her around the property. Took her out to the barn. And there were the animals. Daniel's animals.
Thanksgiving came and they were invited over to Rosie and Ed's for the annual family bash. Molly kept trying to back out.
“I’m not up to facing people. Maybe next year,” she hedged.
Tripoli didn’t argue with her; but
when the time came, he simply tossed Molly her coat and bundled her off into the car before she could really object.
The tiny house on Spencer Street was packed, the table longer this year than ever in the past. There were more cousins than usual, Molly noticed. Aunts and in-laws from out of town. Lots of kids racing noisily up and down the stairs. Rosie had trouble handling the dinner. She dropped a big casserole and Molly went into the kitchen to help her clean up the sweet potatoes and broken glass.
“I’m just a little at loose ends these days,” confessed Rosie as Molly stooped down to help her scrape up the mess.
Using the dustpan as a shovel, Molly came eye-to-eye with her. Rosie, who had always been so round and busty, seemed thin and hollow-cheeked, a shell of her old buoyant self.“You don’t look so good,” she said finally.
“And I don’t feel so great right now, either,” she admitted. “Here, you can just toss the glass in this.” She held out a paper bag and Molly dumped in the shards.
“You ought to go see a doctor,” insisted Molly as she hunted for the broom.
“Yeah. Sure. Soon as I get some time,” said Rosie, but Molly suspected she didn’t mean it. With Ed working but still without insurance, the Greens were too poor to afford medical care, too rich for Medicaid.
Molly took over helping Rosie serve the dinner. Then Rosie's elderly aunt, Betty, came into the kitchen to lend a hand, too. And so did her cousin, Gloria. Between the four, they got the dinner quickly on the table. Everything was there. Everything but the sweet potatoes.
The platters traveled down the long table, people helping themselves. At the far end, the twins sat propped up in baby seats next to Ed who was trying to keep both mouths busy with mashed bananas. The boys seemed large for their age, very alert and exceedingly active. Their big, dark eyes kept eagerly following the other children, and they reminded Molly of Danny when he was that age—the way she would have to aim a spoon at the moving target that was his mouth.
THE LAST BOY Page 42
