Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald)

by Maron, Margaret

  Most people didn’t have to stop and think where their mothers lived, especially if it were in the same borough. But Anne Harald had lived in every Manhattan neighborhood from Inwood to the Battery and seldom stayed in one place more than six months. (Her record was a Tuesday-to-Friday sojourn in Connecticut and she’d have been back in Manhattan on Thursday if any of her photography students had been free then to help her reload the U-Haul-It.) These frequent moves had been so much a part of Sigrid’s childhood that she’d never really questioned Anne’s reasons; but for a split second, Sigrid couldn’t remember if she still had that basement apartment in a Chelsea row house or had actually moved back to the Columbus Circle area as she’d threatened at Christmas. Then Anne said sharply, “If you’re going to turn on Ninth, shouldn’t you get over?” and Sigrid stopped feeling disoriented because Ninth Avenue was a one-way street heading south, which meant Chelsea and that pleasant residential block in the West Twenties.

  Traffic was snarled around the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but once past that, it was only the usual rush hour anarchy: buses pulled in and out of stops in total disregard of smaller vehicles, no one paid attention to lane markings, and double-parkers and jaywalkers added the usual impediments to a smooth flow. Yet Sigrid could feel Anne getting tenser by the minute. Normally her mother was a relaxed passenger who chattered constantly, undistracted by near misses, not even when three lanes of cars and cabs were suddenly squeezed into one. Tonight she seemed edgy and short-tempered and she cut off every conversational gambit Sigrid offered.

  Sigrid often felt like the older and staider of the two, but as tension mounted, she reacted like any guilty daughter and hastily examined her recent past to see if she’d done something to annoy her mother.

  Nothing sprung to mind, unless . . . could it be their birthdays? Today was Sigrid’s; Anne’s was still two weeks away, on the twenty-second. This wasn’t one of those benchmarks that ended in a zero or five. Those usually elicited a rueful melancholy, an awareness of fugitive time. Tonight’s edginess was something different.

  “You’re not coming down with something, are you?” she asked as she turned into Anne’s block.

  “Of course not. I never get sick. You know that. There! Is that a parking space?”

  “Where?” Sigrid asked, distracted.

  “Never mind. There’s a motorcycle parked in it.”

  Sigrid drew up in front of the brownstone that contained Anne’s basement apartment. “I’ll let you out here and go park the car.”

  In that part of town, it was a statement easier made than accomplished, but eventually she found a legal space a block and a half away. Anne had left the door unlocked and was pouring boiling water into a large silver teapot when Sigrid returned.

  Over the years, Anne Harald’s furniture had reduced itself to a few easily packed basic pieces—bed, table and chairs, three chests, two trunks that doubled as occasional tables, some lamps, two new futons to replace a couch that had finally fallen apart during the last move, a bookcase, and the five indispensable file cabinets which held all her papers and photographs. There were also a half-dozen or more cardboard packing boxes full of odds and ends that often never got unpacked between moves. These were usually stacked two high along a bare wall. Covered with exotic fabrics picked up in one of the world’s bazaars and topped with thin sheets of clear plexiglass, the large square cartons served where needed as sideboard or lamp tables.

  Anne had an eye for color and design, and her collection of tablecloths, throws, quilts, and cushions complemented two very fine Persian rugs. These pulled her apartments together and created a sense of careless, comfortable luxury far above their actual monetary value.

  The current apartment was a spacious floor-through. To counteract the basement’s natural darkness, Anne had hung on the front wall a sunburst-patterned patchwork quilt inherited from her grandmother. On the opposite wall was a large blowup of one of her award-winning photographs. Three women whose strong features proclaimed them mother, daughter, and granddaughter stood with linked hands. All three were dressed in dazzling white slacks and sweaters. Spring sunlight glanced off the gleaming white Washington Monument behind them and turned the yellow sashes they wore into gold. The granddaughter’s sash bulged over a baby carrier on her chest. Only the back of the baby’s fuzzy dark head could be seen but a bright purple balloon tied to its carrier read “I’m a choice!”

  A laminated life-sized cutout of Anne herself stood just inside the door, arms outstretched in welcome. It was a long-ago housewarming gift from a fellow photographer and Anne used it as a coat tree. Sigrid added her coat and scarf as Anne brought in tea and placed the tray on a trunk that served as a coffee table between the two futons.

  Without asking how Sigrid wanted hers, Anne filled a chipped mug from the elegant teapot, added a slice of lemon, stirred in a spoonful of honey and handed it over to her daughter.

  Sigrid smiled at the mismatched mugs, the silver badly in need of a good polishing, and the chipped pottery platter of wheat rolls and butter. “Grandmother would have a fit if she saw this.”

  “She has seen it,” Anne smiled back. “And every time, she threatens to send me a gallon of silver polish and ten place settings of her Royal Doulton.”

  Sigrid buttered a roll and bit into it hungrily. “I’d almost forgotten you even had this tea set.”

  “Me, too,” Anne admitted. “I came across it when I was hunting for these.” She pushed two picture frames across the trunk top to Sigrid.

  Like the ornate tea set, they were sterling silver and badly tarnished.

  The tea set had been a wedding present from Anne’s paternal grandmother, a traditional Southerner who had considered silver and crystal as much a prerequisite to marriage as the license; and Sigrid suspected that the frames were also wedding gifts. They were chased with borders of delicate wildflowers and would probably polish up beautifully.

  “Who gave you these?”

  “Your Aunt Kirsten and Uncle Lars,” Anne said, naming the two who’d been Sigrid’s closest substitute for grandparents on her Harald side. “They were brought from Copenhagen around 1890. I thought you might like to have them.”

  “I would,” said Sigrid.

  She had never been sentimental about family heirlooms, especially heirlooms that had to be polished or treated gingerly, but these seemed appropriate for her father’s pictures and she immediately slipped one into each frame. A perfect fit. She stood them up side by side on the trunk top. “Thanks, Mother.”

  Anne rose abruptly. ‘‘I’ll get the box. Mind, these aren’t your birthday present. You don’t get that till next week.”

  With Sigrid’s birthday on the eighth and Anne’s on the twenty-second, the established ritual called for dinner together and an exchange of presents on the fifteenth if Anne were in town.

  Sigrid watched her mother swathe the pictures in old Christmas tissue and put them back in a box. She was puzzled by the sudden return of Anne’s edginess. “Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” Anne snapped.

  “You just don’t seem yourself tonight. Was it a rough day or something?”

  “Or something.” She seemed to hear the waspish tone in her voice and forced a smile. “Sorry. I guess the years are getting to me.” She spooned more honey into her own mug and stirred it purposefully.

  “Oh, come on, Mother. What’s really bothering you?”

  “I don’t know. A combination of things, I suppose.”

  Awkwardly, because they seldom exchanged emotional confidences, Sigrid gestured to the box Anne had laid on the futon beside her. “Is it because of Dad? Does his picture stir up a lot of memories?”

  Anne hesitated, then nodded “And Mickey Cluett. Is it true he was shot?”

  “How’d you hear that?”

  “Wasn’t it in the paper?” Anne answered vaguely. “What happened? Will you be investigating?”

  Sigrid s
hook her head. “It happened in Brooklyn. Probably killed for crack money. All they know right now is that he was shot on his way home from a neighborhood bar, sometime before midnight last night, I think. Did you know him very well?” she asked curiously.

  “Not really. In the early days when Leif and I were first married, Mickey used to stop by the apartment occasionally.

  “That’s right,” said Sigrid. “I forgot. When Dad first joined the force, he was assigned to the old One-Six and Cluett said he worked there, too.” She started to take a sip of tea and then remembered something else.

  “I thought you said you were too busy today to read a paper or even listen to a weather report.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sigrid! Are you going to cross-examine everything I say?” Her spoon clattered sharply against the silver tray as she patted the pockets of her jeans and looked around the room. “What did I do with my cigarettes?” she muttered.

  Sigrid set her mug down firmly. “Okay, Mother. What’s going on?”

  “There, you see?” Anne said illogically. “You made me forget that I gave up smoking a year ago. I still dream about cigarettes, did I tell you?”

  Words spilled from her lips, becoming subtly more Southern in pacing and inflection the more she chattered. “I dream that I’ve rationed myself to two cigarettes a day and Lordy, Lordy, do they taste good. But at the same time, I’m sort of disappointed at my weakness, you know? Because I did take a vow never to light up another and I sort of know that in my dreams and yet—”

  Her words trailed off as her eyes met Sigrid’s level gaze and she gave a rueful, hands up laugh. “Oy gevalt!” she said. In her present mood, the Yiddish phrase sounded more like ‘I give up.’ “I always start babbling when you look at me like that.”

  “Mother—”

  “It’s okay honey. I know you can’t help it.” She smile brightly and felt Sigrid’s cup. “It’s cold. Want me to heat this up? And what about something to eat? I have cold chicken if you’d like a sandwich or—” She ran a hand through her tangled curls. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Sigrid. She slipped off her boots and tucked her feet beneath her on the futon.

  Anne took a deep breath. “Mac called me this afternoon.”

  “Mac? Captain McKinnon?”

  Her mother nodded.

  It was like stepping down on a step that wasn’t there. “I didn’t realize you and he were that connected.”

  “We’re not,” Anne said sharply. “When he showed up in your hospital room last fall, that was the first time I’d spoken to him since the day of your father’s funeral. Today is the second time.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. He called me.”

  “No, I mean why have you never talked to him since Dad was killed? They worked together every day. They must have been close. Unless . . .” For the first time since learning that her father and her boss had been partners, the thought occurred to her: “Didn’t they like each other?”

  “Of course they did. They were best friends—David and Jonathan. Smith and Wesson.”

  Sigrid did not consider herself very good at picking up on nuances, but she sensed something darker beneath her mother’s flippancy. She had such vague disconnected memories of her father and only one of those memories included other big tall men in uniforms like his. Yet she had grown up with no recollection of having heard McKinnon’s name and she certainly hadn’t recognized him when she first began working for him almost two years ago.

  “A cop doesn’t walk away from his best friend’s wife and child the week that friend gets killed. Why did McKinnon?”

  “I told him to.” Anne had gone back to fiddling with the honey spoon. She scooped a viscous heap from the jar, then held the spoon above the rim so that the thick golden honey flowed back down into the jar.

  “Because Dad was killed and he wasn’t?”

  “Something like that. It was all mixed up in my mind, honey. I honestly don’t blame him any more.”

  “Any more?”

  “That Leif died and he didn’t,” she said with an impatient twitch of her shoulder.

  Last autumn Mick Cluett had tried to talk about her dad and she’d cut him off, thought Sigrid. Just as she’d cut him off at that farewell get-together last month. What would he have said?

  “I pulled Dad’s file last fall,” she told Anne. “Did you know Mick Cluett was their backup?”

  “I’m surprised you had to read it. Didn’t Mickey tell you all about it himself?” Anne asked bitterly, as the last golden drops fell from the spoon. “He showed up at our apartment that evening still wearing the uniform drenched with your father’s blood, roaring drunk, and telling anyone who’d listen how he’d cradled Leif’s head in his arms as he died.”

  “Is that why Captain McKinnon called you today?”

  “Probably. I didn’t ask. Let it go, Siga. I don’t want to talk about the past anymore.” She stuck the spoon back in the honey jar and stood briskly. “Let’s see what Mama sent us this year, okay?”

  Sigrid knew it would be useless to push for more information tonight. Anne seldom let herself be pinned down very long and from here on would find a dozen ways to keep changing the subject. But the thought of McKinnon calling to tell Anne about Cluett’s death was bewildering; and despite Anne’s determined cheerfulness, Sigrid wasn’t in the mood for one of Grandmother Lattimore’s annual attempts to turn her into a candidate for Hymen’s altar.

  “What is it this year?” she said sourly, as Anne opened a large white envelope stuck with commemorative North Carolina stamps and addressed to both of them in Jane Lattimore’s flowing Spencerian script. “A check for miniskirts and four-inch heels?”

  Whenever Mrs. Lattimore sent money, she usually included clothing ads from The New York Times or Vogue and she expected to see the results on her next visit to the city. A dutiful granddaughter, Sigrid always spent the money as ordered—half her closet space was devoted to clothes as frivolous as peacock feathers—but she’d seldom worn them before Oscar Nauman entered her life and even now wasn’t completely comfortable wearing them with him.

  Anne slit open the envelope and extracted two smaller ones. A mischievous gurgle of laughter escaped her as she scanned the contents. “You’re not going to like this,” she grinned.

  “What?” Sigrid asked apprehensively.

  “She’s sent us matching gift certificates. For Imagine You!”

  “Imagine You!?” She didn’t like the sound of the name. “What’s that? A beauty salon? Dress shop?”

  “A very expensive Fifth Avenue fashion consultant. We’re going to have our colors done.”

  “Oh God!” Sigrid groaned.

  CHAPTER 7

  By 9:30 P.M. on that Wednesday night, Lotty Fischer had cleared most of the work left in her In-basket. When she returned from her supper break, she picked up the names Wally Abronski had left for her and logged in again. This was part of the job’s fun. From her computer terminal, she could access dozens of data banks around the country. One of the first things she’d done four years ago was locate everything available on all her favorite stars. She knew where John Travolta lived, what kind of car Tom Cruise drove in real life, how many speeding tickets the Mets had amassed between them, and which players had been charged with DWI.

  Her fingers flashed over the board as she keyed in the name of the boy Wally’s daughter was seeing. No outstanding warrants in his name. She tried him with DMV. One speeding ticket last year. His Social Security number did not begin with the 110 which indicated New York so she checked a reference book on her desk and saw that it must have been issued in Missouri. A few dozen more keystrokes and she was querying Missouri’s DMV.

  Nothing.

  She repeated the process with the father’s name and immediately scored a direct hit. At that very moment, the man was wanted in St. Charles, Missouri for aggravated assault, a nonfamily incident involving a gun. The entry ended IMMED CONFIRM RECORD W
ITH ORI. In this case, the originating office was that of the St. Charles County sheriff’s department.

  “Oh, jeez,” said Wally when she told him. “I didn’t really think you’d get a hit. I was just playing safe. Oh jeez, Dee’s gonna kill me. She really likes this guy and here I’ve fingered his old man.”

  He ripped off the printout and went away to set the appropriate wheels in motion.

  Shortly before ten, her friend Jennifer phoned over from central data processing. They gossiped for a couple of minutes, then Jennifer said, “Oh, by the way: that cop that got shot over in Sheepshead Bay?”

  “Mmm?” Lotty remembered hearing it mentioned during the supper break. She thought she might have seen him in passing, with some of the homicide detectives, but he was no one she’d formally met and she couldn’t really put a face to Michael Cluett’s name.

  “We got in a notice tonight that you once ran a check on the gun that killed him.”

  “I did?” she asked, interested. “When?”

  “Almost four years ago.” Candace read off the date.

  “What was it in connection with?”

  “Doesn’t say. Better check it out though. Someone’ll probably be around tonight or tomorrow to ask you about it.”

  “Give me the serial number,” said Lotty and wrote it down on her pad, along with the gun’s make, a Browning .380 semiautomatic.

  It took a while to reconstruct that evening, but it’d happened when she was still new at the job and conscientiously noting everything in the log. When she’d finished, Lotty stared blankly at her computer screen.

  One gun check in the middle of a three-hour stint with license numbers? That meant it probably wasn’t official.

  It was coming back to her. Her natural friendly helpfulness coupled with who was asking. She could even remember the earlier conversation that had triggered the check.

  A white patrol officer in the Bronx had run into a dark alley after a fleeing man reported to be armed. At the end of the alley, he’d turned with a menacing gesture as if to fire. The officer fired first; the man was killed.