by Jane Langton
“No problem,” said Woody. “I’ll get right to it.”
As usual, Donald Woody was attending to the monstrous complex of buildings in his care with instantaneous attention to problems small and large. Unfortunately he still had no understanding of what lay below the daycare center, below the pattering feet of the children, deep down below the boiler room with its oil-fired furnaces and the chamber housing the elevator engine with its cables and solenoids, below the hall where the AIDS support group met, below the chancel end of the sanctuary with its panelled pulpit and the portrait of Walter Wigglesworth holding the book Divine Inspiration, below Jeanie Perkupp’s arrangement of pulpit flowers—this morning they were roses and carnations.
In the dry weather the water table under the Clarendon Street corner of Commonwealth Avenue had sunk another inch. Yesterday’s rain had done little to improve the situation. It merely bounced on the hard ground and ran off in trickles and rivulets. Behind the church offices the raindrops struck the pavement and poured into a catch basin and flowed into the combined sewer running along the alley.
Below the manhole across the street the switch to the buried sump pump was still stuck in the on position—there it hung, the on-off button, beside the cable that sent electric power down to the pump and a pipe lifting twenty-five gallons a minute to the level of the storm drain. A flick of the finger would have turned off the switch, but no finger came along to do the job. The lawsuit that had stalled the construction of the new hotel had blossomed. Now it was in full and furious flower. The case was moving through the courts at a snail’s pace.
There was another hidden reason for the drastic lowering of the water table, a cracked connecting pipe from the church to the main sewer line. It was part of the history of the Boston sewage system.
Once upon a time Bostonians had meditated in lonely dignity in outhouses, little isolated buildings out-of-doors, and their waste products had mingled with the soil in single personal batches, flowing at last into the Charles River. But all the noble houses erected in the Back Bay in the nineteenth century had been supplied with indoor plumbing. Henceforth the output of Bostonian bladders and bowels swirled at the pull of a chain down and away into clay pipes connected to sewer lines, and surged in a foul democracy of excremental fellowship to a pumping station far away, from which it was discharged into a treatment plant.
But now the clay pipes were old. For a decade before Donald Woody’s time the parking area behind the church had been a muddy yard. Trash and delivery trucks had backed up to the rear doors, their heavy wheels compacting the soil, pressing down on the buried connecting pipe until the joints between the sections no longer met. Groundwater had been flowing into the cracks for years, deepening the drawdown. In the drying wood of the pilings under the east wall of the church clusters of borer’s eggs were hatching, releasing microscopic insects that spread themselves far and wide.
Woody was oblivious to the rot below. Above ground he was creating an earthly paradise. After fixing Ruth Raymond’s thermostat, he ran lightly downstairs to his basement office to eat his bag lunch and feed his fish and inspect the tiny seedlings he was growing under lights. Today he was pleased to see little humps of blue salvia pushing their way out of the soil. The chrysanthemums were already sporting two pairs of miniature leaves. They were ready to be transplanted into pots.
One of the neon lights above the seedlings buzzed. Woody’s canary chirped in its cage. Beneath his feet as he walked to and fro, tending his indoor garden, the round metal disks in the floor clinked softly.
CHAPTER 24
Never have I seen a more ignorant ass than you.
Martin Luther
The baby lay asleep in the playpen. He was now a ward of the state, since his mother and father were both officially dead.
Alan sat in a chair beside the playpen in the shadow of Rosie’s giant rubber plant and turned the pages of her notebook until he came to the list of musical oddities—
Self-sounding bells
Echoes in different languages
Boxes in which sounds can be locked up
Mirror fugues
Puzzle canons …
Well, it was a crazy list. Flipping to a clean page, he took out his pen.
FEBRUARY 14, VALENTINE’S DAY
Today Charley stood up in the playpen, let go of the railing and took a couple of steps before he sat down. He’s getting so big his clothes don’t fit any more. I took him to an expensive place on Charles Street and bought him some overalls, but there must be a better way. I bought him a ball, and now he rolls it back to me.
For whom was he writing this record? For himself, for Charley, for Charley’s mother? But Rosie was probably dead, burned to a crisp the way Debbie Buffington said. It was almost impossible to keep believing she was still alive.
Homer too was having a hard time believing in the continued existence of Rosalind Hall.
In the office of Lieutenant Detective Roger Campbell he kept up a good front, doing his best for Alan Starr. “Little Charley saw his mother, you see, and that’s when he said his first word, Mama.”
“The baby identified the woman?”
“Well, I admit it sounds a little crazy under the fluorescent lights in your office, surrounded by file drawers full of the testimony of adult witnesses, but listen here, Campbell, this infant is definitely precocious.”
“Now let me get this straight. We’re supposed to take the word of a baby—how old did you say this kid is? Not even eighteen months? We’re supposed to take the word of an infant that the woman whose burned body was found in Rosalind Hall’s car was not Rosalind Hall, even though she was carrying Rosalind Hall’s pocketbook, credit cards and driver’s license? Even though Rosalind Hall has disappeared from the face of the earth? It’s true they botched the autopsy, but how could that piece of toasted flesh be anybody else?”
Homer waved his hand feebly. “Well, suppose foul play was involved? Suppose someone deliberately wants us to think she’s dead?”
“Why would somebody want us to think she’s dead, if she’s alive and well and getting into cars? She was a woman of good character, right? Except for something unspecified on her record some years back—probably nothing, nothing at all. Why doesn’t she come forward and say she’s alive? Why doesn’t she come back for her child? What kind of mother is she? What is this supposed to be, some kind of insurance scam? How much insurance did she have on her life anyhow? Wait a sec, I’ll tell you. Hey, Marjorie, give me that file, will you? Here, Homer, listen to this, here it is. She had a very small policy. Young women like her, healthy, they don’t usually go in for a lot of insurance.”
Chastened, Homer said, “R-i-i-i-i-g-h-t.”
Campbell leaned forward and patted Homer’s knee. “Listen, friend, we’ve done a lot of good stuff together in the past, but sometimes, admit it, Homer, you go off the deep end. And this is the deepest you’ve ever gone. A kid still in diapers says ‘Mama,’ and you go berserk. Wait’ll I tell Frankie what you said.”
“Who’s Frankie?” said Homer nervously.
Campbell snickered. “What do you mean, who’s Frankie? Francis Xavier Powers, District Attorney of Suffolk County, that’s who Frankie is.” Campbell laughed again, and slapped his thigh. “He’ll think it’s a howl.”
Mortified, Homer changed the subject. “Did you find out why the burned body was cremated before they could do an autopsy?”
“Honest mistake, the pathologist said. Somebody put the wrong identification on the refrigerator drawer, got a couple of stiffs mixed up. Fortunately it was what the girl wanted. She wanted to be cremated, that’s what they told me at Boston City Hospital.”
“What girl? You mean Rosalind herself? She’d expressed a desire to be cremated when she died? How did they know that?”
“Phone call from a relative.”
“What relative?” said Homer sharply. “I thought she didn’t have any relatives.”
“Great-aunt, I guess. She had a couple
of great-aunts. I met them at her memorial service. Here, do you want their names? I’ve got them right here someplace.”
Homer kicked himself for forgetting about Rosie’s memorial service. He knew perfectly well that it was always a good idea after any weird kind of unnatural death to go to the funeral and look over the dramatis personae. Humbly he copied down the names of the two great-aunts. “I think I’ll just have a talk with the two of them.”
“Ask them about the cremation notion,” said Campbell, “the girl being so explicit about wanting to be cremated. Remember, it wasn’t until after the service that the mixup happened. The medical examiner was holding the body for autopsy when this woman called and said Rosalind had always wanted to be cremated, it was her dearest wish, and the M.E. said, that’s fine, but not until we do an autopsy, but then there was that mixup, and the remains were sent to a crematorium, and that was that.”
Homer shuddered, and said goodbye, and went out into the winter dark and looked for his car. He had parked it too close to a fire plug, and sure enough, Goddamn it, he had a ticket.
Furiously he snatched it out from under the windshield wiper and galloped back to Campbell’s office, but Campbell held up both hands in a helpless gesture. “Sorry, pal.”
When Homer got back to his car there was another ticket with a fine twice as large as the first.
On the other side of town Barbara Inch was lucky. She didn’t own a car. For her interview with the Trustees of the Frederick Music Endowment she walked to the Church of the Commonwealth.
The interview went well. Martin Kraeger was present. Barbara had often heard him preach, but this was the first time she had actually been introduced to the officiating clergyman of the church in which she hoped to be chosen as interim choir director. The trustees gathered in the music room. Barbara was surprised to find how little they seemed to know about music.
“My husband was a lover of sacred music,” said Mrs. Frederick, wondering why this young woman didn’t do something about her hair.
“I’ve been singing in the choir for thirty years,” said Eleanor Bertram, wishing Barbara had worn something a little smarter than that long shapeless dress.
“My father saw the first performance of Salome by Richard Strauss in Dresden,” bragged Henry Mortimer, wondering why the girl didn’t replace her thick glasses with contact lenses.
“I don’t know anything about music,” confessed Martin Kraeger, deciding to vote in Barbara’s favor when the time arrived.
Afterward, walking blindly along the darkening street, her hair blowing in front of her, passing muffled figures huddled against the cold, Barbara came to the conclusion that she was not a lesbian after all. She admired those women, she respected them, but she wasn’t one of them. No, she wasn’t one of them at all.
CHAPTER 25
I have cracked many hollow nuts … they fouled my mouth, and filled it with dust.
Martin Luther
The first of Rosie’s great-aunts was not what Homer expected. Dr. Emmeline Ferris was not a dear old lady with a lace collar and a cameo pin. She was a tough cookie, a psychiatrist in charge of highly disturbed patients at the state hospital in Danvers.
“No,” she said firmly, “I never heard Rosie say she wanted to be cremated. I doubt the thought ever entered her head.” Dr. Ferris snatched up a file folder and flipped it open, as though willing Homer Kelly to go away.
Homer opened his mouth to ask another question, but there was a disturbance in the hall. Someone shrieked. Dr. Ferris leaped up, threw open the door and bellowed, “Give him what he wants.”
“But he’s been through a whole pack since yesterday,” gasped a young man in a white coat. He was wrestling with a tall kid in a T-shirt. The kid shrieked again.
“Who the hell cares?” cried Rosie’s great-aunt. She slammed the door, returned to her desk and sat down with a thump. “Anything else?” she said crisply, dumping the contents of the file folder on her desk.
Homer was dismissed. But as he got up to go, he asked an embarrassing question. “Oh, Dr. Ferris, do you have any suggestions about what to do with Rosie’s child? It will be put up for adoption if none of her relatives take it.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Dr. Ferris. “The girl was a fool to marry that feckless young man. I told her so at the time. What kind of care would a baby get from me? Responsible adoptive parents, that’s the best thing for a baby girl.”
“Baby boy,” said Homer dryly.
“Well, whatever.”
The second great-aunt was altogether different. Her name was Roberta Birdee.
Mrs. Birdee lived in a big chateau-like house on a broad tree-lined street in Newton. Homer was ushered in by a maid in uniform. She was the only uniformed maid he had ever seen outside a movie theater, except for his mother’s sister, who had been in service in the household of Mayor Curley.
The maid led the way to a large living room in which Roberta Birdee lay on a puffy sofa, eating chocolates from a heart-shaped box. Homer was charmed.
Mrs. Birdee offered the box to Homer, and he took a round morsel containing a syrupy cherry. “Mmmm, deelishush,” he said, sitting down.
“My hubby gave them to me for Valentine’s Day.” Mrs. Birdee, a chubby woman with dimpled cheeks, wore a frilly bedjacket and lay under a fluffy comforter. Everything about her was chubby and fluffy too. Even the word hubby, shaped by her tiny mouth, sounded cozy and plump.
Homer admired the way her mouth went around in circles as she worked her way through the box of chocolates. She offered it to him again. “Here, dear, try the square ones.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” murmured Homer greedily, thinking of the snacks usually provided by his wife, healthy vegetables like carrot sticks and slices of green pepper. “Mmm, caramel, my favorite.”
“You’ve come about poor dear Rosie,” said Mrs. Birdee. “Oh, of course, we couldn’t take the baby. The social worker, Mrs. Barker, asked us, but we couldn’t possibly. I’ve been ill, you see.” She put a pudgy hand to her breast, to indicate fragility somewhere inside. “Of course, if there’s anything else we can do, we would be absolutely—” She paused while her little mouth went around and around, rotating clockwise, crushing and absorbing a piece of fudge. “Here, dear, have another.”
Homer helped himself. “What I really want to know, Mrs. Birdee, is whether or not Rosie ever told you that after her death she wished to be cremated?”
“Cremated! Goodness! It’s not the sort of thing you talk about, is it? So disagreeable. No, I’m sure we never discussed any such thing. Do try these, Mr. Kelly. Chocolate-covered almonds.”
Homer’s stomach was beginning to turn. Politely he waved away the heart-shaped box. “What about you?” he said evilly, probing in the soft flesh just for the hell of it. “Would you rather be buried in a coffin and just sort of slowly deteriorate over the years, or be burned up and have your ashes scattered somewhere? Although I gather you don’t just burn down into ashes. I mean there are still big chunks of blackened bone, that’s what they tell me.”
Mrs. Birdee’s little mouth stopped working. She stared at him. Then she took another chocolate-covered cherry and murmured around the edges, “Oh, deary me.” This time her tiny mouth went counterclockwise, going around and around the other way.
“We’ve got to find him. We’ve just got to find him. I don’t care what happens to me. They’ll give him to me. I’m his mother.”
“Look, what good would it do to find him if you’re incarcerated for the rest of your life? They’ve got four charges against you—two or three cases of arson, one manslaughter, one first-degree murder. Now, listen, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Charley, he’s all that matters. We’ve got to find Charley.”
“Listen to me. You can’t come forward and say who you are. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You don’t exist any longer. So they’re not looking for you any more. You’re safe, but you’ve got to leave the country.”
&nbs
p; “Safe! Why am I safe?”
“Because, my dear, they think you’re dead.”
“Dead!”
“Dead.”
“But why? Why do they think—?”
“Never mind. They do, and you can thank me for it.”
“But, oh, God, dead!”
“All you’ve got to do is leave the country and be somebody else from now on. You can go to Germany, the way we planned it before.”
“But I can’t, I won’t—not without Charley! We’ve got to find Charley! I won’t go without Charley!”
“Oh, Christ!”
CHAPTER 26
Ingratitude is a very irksome thing.
Martin Luther
Alan found a place for Harold Oates to live. It was a couple of furnished rooms on Worthington Street, a neighborhood not yet gentrified into high-rent condominiums. From his magnificent new salary as director of music at the Church of the Commonwealth, he paid the rent for both the first and the last month, a substantial sum.
Oates did not appear grateful. When Alan showed him his new quarters, he looked around suspiciously, pressed his long fingers into the mattress and pronounced it too soft, and complained about the sunshine. Then he went to the window and frowned down at the street, where some little kids were racing up and down on tricycles.
“Look, Mr. Oates,” said Alan, “have you got anything in that suitcase you can wear to an audition?”
Oates turned around and looked at Alan savagely. “What do you mean, audition? Harold Oates does not audition.”
“Look, I’m trying to arrange a series of concerts. It’s been so long since anybody’s heard you. Younger people, they don’t know who you are.”
Grudgingly Oates opened his suitcase. The contents were not encouraging.
“Well, maybe I’ve got something I can loan you,” said Alan patiently, “although I’m pretty short on respectable clothes myself.”
Leaving Oates to settle in, Alan took the T to Park Street and walked up the hill and down again to Debbie Buffington’s apartment.
