by Julie Smith
Mary Ellen said, “It’s all right. Rebecca explained about Esperanza.”
He nodded, undaunted, and continued full speed ahead. “Warren, boy, I thought you hated Chardonnay.”
“Mary Ellen wanted some.”
Mary Ellen said, “You didn’t want wine, Warren? Why didn’t you say so?”
Libby came in. “Where’s the hot chocolate?”
“Coining up,” I said. “Want to take it upstairs?”
She spoke softly, as if her feelings were hurt. “I’ll drink mine down here.”
That was puzzling. I looked my question at Julio, thinking he must have popped into his daughter’s room on the way down. “Esperanza’s gone quiet again,” he said.
“I’ll take it up.” I was glad to get away. Mary Ellen had reminded me a little of Lady Macbeth, with her take-charge manner and her proud talk of Warren’s ascendancy. I shivered a little at the analogy—there was a spot of blood on someone’s hand, and it was someone capable of jamming a letter opener into a person’s eye. Mary Ellen might have the stuff, I thought.
Esperanza had the covers over her head.
“Hot chocolate!” I sang out merrily, as if I hadn’t noticed a thing.
She peeked out, letting me see she’d been crying.
“Can we talk?” I said.
No answer.
“Honey, you learned something in the bay today. I know you did. I felt it when I was holding you on the boat.”
“What?”
“That you don’t want to die. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“Sit up and drink.” I offered the cup.
She took it and settled herself on the pillows. When she had sipped a little, I said, “You can tell me about it, really, honey. You know why? Because you’re my client. Have you ever heard of attorney-client privilege?”
She shook her head.
“Well, it means that whatever you tell me has to be a secret. I’m not allowed to tell anybody unless you tell me I can. If I do, I could be punished by the bar.”
“The bar? You mean the place where you drink?”
“No, sweetheart, there’s another kind of bar that means a lawyers’ professional association. If I told a client’s secrets, I could get in big trouble.”
She looked at me, sizing me up, deciding whether she was going to hire me. “Are you really a lawyer?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Am I really your client?”
“If you want to be, I’m taking your case.”
Tears cascaded. She fell against my breast, spilling hot chocolate all over my T-shirt.
“Ouch,” I yelled, but I could still hear what she was blubbering: “I don’t want to go to jail.”
I stroked her hair. “You’re not going to jail, honey. Honest. I guarantee it. Do you believe me?”
She sat back and looked in my eyes, assessing. This was a girl who would do well in business. I think she decided I had an honest face. She nodded.
“Sister Teresa says if you steal something, they put you in jail for it, and Abuelita—my grandmother—says you go to hell for it, and Sister Teresa says hell is like jail except you have to stay there forever instead of just forty or fifty years.”
“Okay, let’s start with hell. Now, not everybody believes in it; we already talked about that.”
She nodded.
“But I’m not even sure that people who believe in hell think kids can go there. And the other thing they believe is that you can be forgiven. Remember the two thieves on the cross? That Jesus forgave?”
Her jaw dropped. “How do you know about that? You’re Jewish.”
“How do you know that!"
“Daddy told me. I asked him if he liked you, and he said he did but you probably wouldn’t go out with him because he isn’t Jewish and you are. Is that true? You aren’t prejudiced, are you, Rebecca?”
I told my heart to be still and Esperanza that no, I wasn’t prejudiced, but I wasn’t sure lawyers could date their clients’ fathers. And then I asked my client why she was afraid of her father.
Her gold skin turned almost pale. She whispered, “I told him I found it on the beach.”
“The white thing? You told him that about the white thing?”
She stared at her feet. “I lied. I stole it.”
“And you’re afraid he’ll punish you?”
“Yes. I’m afraid he’ll be so mad he’ll send me back to Santa Barbara, and Abuelita will tell Sister Teresa, and I don’t know what she’ll do! She might turn me in to the police and get me sent to jail.”
I smiled. “She can’t hurt my client. I don’t know whether kids can go to hell or not, but I guarantee you they can’t go to jail.”
“They can’t?” She looked utterly unbelieving. “But Sister says—”
“Sister’s wrong. But don’t worry. Your dad’s not going to send you back.”
She was alarmed. “You won’t tell him, will you?”
I must have looked flustered. She’d caught me in a conflict of interest. I had a responsibility to let her parent know that nothing was seriously wrong—nothing by adult standards, that is. Didn’t I?
“You promised! Attorney-client privilege.”
That settled it. My responsibility lay with my client.
“Of course I won’t tell him. No problem. Now tell me about the white thing. You know, the law distinguishes between different kinds of stealing. There’s petty theft and grand theft, for instance. Between you and me, legally petty theft isn’t much of a crime. Of course, morally’s another matter, but I’m your lawyer, and the law isn’t allowed to get into moral questions. Now, even if they sent kids to jail—which they don’t, I can’t make that clear enough—what you did isn’t the same as stealing a car, say. That would be grand theft, and a grownup might get a few years for that, but—” I shrugged “—a random white thing probably isn’t worth very much.”
About halfway through this speech, a change started to come over her face. I thought it was just worry, but it had congealed into misery by the time I finished.
Her voice trembled. “What if it is worth a lot?”
This was getting frustrating. “Darling, do you think you could tell me what it is?”
“I’m not sure what it is. That’s why I gave it to Sadie. So she could tell me.”
“Well, what does it look like? Besides a brain, I mean? What do you think it is?”
She was very solemn. “A pearl of great price.”
“Ah. It must be a freshwater pearl. Those are the ones with little wrinkles—like convolutions in a brain.”
She shook her head. “My mom has a necklace made out of freshwater pearls. They look more like Rice Krispies than brains. This one’s different. It’s not very round either, but it’s more like a rock—and it’s a whole lot bigger.”
“How big?”
“A little smaller than a golf ball.”
“It couldn’t be a pearl then, honey. Pearls don’t come that big.”
“Oh, yes, they do. I did a report on them.” There was authority in her voice. She straightened her spine and began to recite. “The largest pearl ever found was called the Pearl of Allah. It weighed fourteen pounds. A native from an island found the humongous white thing on the inside of a giant clam. The only problem was, the clam closed both of its shells while he was looking at it, which killed him. That was in 1934.”
She was adorable, but I had to laugh. I was utterly charmed out of my mind, and laughing my head off. I couldn’t understand why she’d stopped and purposefully furrowed the spot between her brows, disapproval personified.
“You don’t believe me!” If she’d been standing, she’d have stamped her foot.
“I do, I do, it’s not that at all. I’m laughing because you’re so cute.”
She summoned every bit of her ten-year-old dignity. “I prefer to be taken seriously.”
“But I do take you seriously. It’s just that my boyfriend—”
“Your boyfriend!”
I could see the idea distressed her. “My ex-boyfriend does exactly what you’re doing, that’s all. Only he’s out of school, so he doesn’t write reports. He’s a newspaper reporter. He writes news stories and then quotes himself. He’s very cute when he does it, too.”
“Oh.” Still hurt. But I was touched by the way she hated the boyfriend talk. She really wanted me to date her dad. Oh, well. It was an odd thing to do for a client, but if she insisted—
She said sullenly, “It was an oral report. I was supposed to memorize it.”
“Could I hear the rest of it?”
“I guess so.” She drew up her spine again. And suddenly I saw a chance to make points.
“Hold it a minute. I’ll teach you something. Want to see how a lawyer makes the jury listen? When you talk to me, make me vibrate.”
“Huh?”
“Imagine you’re making me vibrate. It’s a trick for projecting your voice.” (Naturally, I didn’t mention I’d learned this, not at Clarence Darrow’s knee, but in my acting class.)
“Two years after the horrible tragedy,” she resonated, “a man who came to the island cured the chief’s son of a terrible disease, so the chief gave him the pearl. The man was an American. But the chief told the man he shouldn’t ever sell the pearl, or a great catastrophe would strike his family.”
I vibrated like crazy on “catastrophe.”
“So naturally the man kept the pearl, which was known far and wide ever after as the biggest pearl in the whole world. He could never sell it even though in 1971—no, I think it was 1972—no, ’71. In 1971 the Guinness Book of World Records said it was worth four million dollars.” Her stage presence dissolved. “You think that puts it in the grand theft category?”
“Whew. I’d say so. But, sweetheart, you didn’t steal the Pearl of Allah, did you?”
“No, but I bet the one I got is worth plenty. I mean if it is a pearl. Whoever heard of a pearl as big as a Ping-Pong ball?”
“Just about nobody, I guess. So where did you get this pearl of great price?” I tried to keep my voice casual.
She pleated the coverlet. “From Ricky.”
“Ricky? The model-maker?”
“I was going to put it back! I was always going to put it back!”
“Okay, take it easy, honey. Just tell me what happened, and you’ll feel better, I promise.”
She kept looking at her ever-smaller pleats. All she gave me to look at was the top of her head.
“Well, Amber and I wanted to play Ping-Pong, but there weren’t any balls. And she had to go to the bathroom, so she told me there were some balls out in the garage. I found this paper bag with six-packs in it—you know what they look like? They’re like a piece of cardboard and then a plastic thing on the balls.”
“You mean plastic with little pockets? Like the way they package small toys?”
“Uh-huh. Only one of them had a ball in it that wasn’t a ball. I only noticed because I pulled it out first. It didn’t feel right. It was heavy.” Finally she looked up, wanting to make contact. “I saw a picture of the Pearl of Allah when I was doing my report. You know why it’s called that?”
I shook my head.
“It’s supposed to look like Mohammed’s turban. But it really looks just like a brain. And so did this one. There it was, just lying there, in my hand. Looking exactly like the Pearl of Allah! Only smaller.”
Her eyes were shining with treasure-lust; she wouldn’t be the first person to have had a sudden criminal impulse regarding a great gem. “I wanted to have it for a little while.”
“I know, honey.”
“I asked Sadie if it was real, and she said she’d have to do some research on it, and then—she got killed! What if it really is real and somebody found out she had it and they killed her for it?”
I decided to confront her fear head-on: “It wouldn’t be your fault, honey. It wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t! Do you believe me?”
She nodded, looking down.
“No, you don’t. That’s really why you wanted to drown, wasn’t it? Because you think that?”
The small head bent once more.
“And that’s why you sent your dad back to get the pearl—I mean, the white thing. Because if it was in Sadie’s desk, or her house, then that would mean she couldn’t have been killed for it. Right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, I’ll find out.”
“You will?”
“Somehow or other, I will.”
“And you won’t tell anybody?”
That was another matter. “Not tonight. I can promise you that much.”
“You said you wouldn’t tell anybody, ever! You said you could get in trouble with the bar.”
Okay. All right, already.
“Well, I did and I won’t. But I want to give you a chance to sleep on it. Maybe things will look different in the morning, and you’ll feel like talking the whole thing over with your dad by then. Could you think about that?”
“I guess so.”
“There’s one other thing that worries me. Did you tell Amber about the white thing?”
“No.”
“Why do you think she’s grounded?”
She spoke reluctantly. “I think Ricky thinks she took it.”
“Don’t you think we need to get her off the hook?”
Tears spilled out of her eyes. “Oh, Rebecca, she’ll never be my friend again!”
“Sure she will.” But I thought she’d gone as far as she could for one night. “Listen, let’s talk more about it in the morning, shall we?” I patted her leg.
“Okay. Could you send Libby up now?”
Her face was completely innocent of worry. If confession is good for the adult soul, it’s a positive transfusion for the youthful one. The idea that this girl, now ready to play Barbies with her friend, had tried to kill herself that afternoon seemed ridiculous.
Her dad, on the other hand, was now looking ready to take his own life. He also looked pretty silly sitting on Marty’s terra-cotta sofa in her short pink robe, and I thought he must surely be uncomfortable entertaining guests that way. But Mary Ellen’s voice floated everything else out of my consciousness:
“Warren wanted to quit, you know—” Julio had found peanuts, and she took a handful “—but I hate a quitter. I said, ‘Warren, you have to make your own opportunity.’” Warren’s face couldn’t have looked more pinched if his nose had been caught in a vise. Mary Ellen swallowed the handful of peanuts, looking as if they satisfied her like a multiple orgasm. “And I was right. Good things happen to people with gumption, people who stick it out no matter what.” She was on her second glass of wine.
I said, “Warren, I didn’t know you were unhappy at the aquarium.”
He looked bewildered and a bit rabbity. “I—uh—wasn’t.”
“Warren, you were! You knew you’d never go to the top with Sadie there. She was just too good.”
He shrugged, looking apologetic, I thought, though whether for his own sorry self or for his pushy wife, I didn’t know. “I wasn’t really thinking of ‘going to the top.’”
Mary Ellen snorted.
“I’ve always wanted to write a book,” he said wistfully.
Julio stood. “I think I’d better get some clothes on.”
Warren stood as well. “We won’t keep you any longer. We just wanted to make sure Rebecca and the kids didn’t need anything.” He looked at me, affording Julio an opportunity to slip out. “Is there anything else we can do for you?” He was the perfect picture of an acting director, a person who has achieved seniority taking care of the also-rans—in Marty’s case, more than an also-ran. A possible serious loser.
“No, thanks.” I started to walk toward the door, hoping he and Mary Ellen would take the hint and follow, but Mary Ellen began to gather up wineglasses, a practice I truly hate in a guest. Rather than take her cue and flutter guiltily about in her wake, I continued toward the door.
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To my surprise, Warren plucked at my sleeve. “Rebecca, I need to talk to you.”
I’m afraid I stared, more or less speechless. He glanced furtively up the stairs. “I didn’t know you were involved with Julio.”
“I’m not!” The angry, self-justifying words were out before I could stop them, and I was furious at myself for being manipulated into a defensive posture.
“You’ve got to be careful.” He was whispering. “He was at the aquarium last night. I was in the parking lot about seven-thirty. I saw him coming out.”
“Warren! Warren, where are you?” Apparently it was her husband whom Mary Ellen had expected to flutter in her wake. She caught up with us before I could ask him what he was doing in the parking lot.
CHAPTER TEN
I put away the ham and washed the damned wineglasses while Julio got dressed. It was getting on toward six o’clock, and I was thinking of having my long-postponed glass of wine with Julio when he returned—and wondering if it would loosen my tongue enough to tell him what Warren had said. I tried Judge Reyes again. No answer.
Keil and Ava came in, Keil’s step light in his Reeboks, Ava’s heavy not so much with weight as with judgment. She carried it in her aura like a coat of mail.
“Rebecca! We got the thermometer!” There was triumph in the boy’s voice that had nothing to do with sickroom equipment. Another job well done by Trap Door.
Ava followed him heavily into the back hall, where I met them, dishtowel in hand. “Thanks so much, you two, but I don’t think we’ll need it. She’s fine now—Libby’s with her.” I could have sworn Ava looked disappointed. Her lips set as she resigned herself to giving up a sick child to nurse. I was trying to handle the implications of that, to deal with the ominous fluttering it made in my gut when Keil hollered, “Rebecca, it’s for you!”
I realized the phone had rung and been answered. The receiver clattered on the counter, and the refrigerator door clicked open almost simultaneously.
I was annoyed. The caller, of course, could be only one person, and he’d phoned at an extremely inconvenient time.
“Hello, Rob,” I said, making my voice cold enough to raise goose bumps back in Cambridge.
