He was only a year old in the picture. George hadn’t cried at all when the flashbulbs went off, making that loud pop. He’d hammed it up, smiling even more. The photographer had called him “a natural.” John hadn’t wanted her to spend the money at the photo studio, saying that they should wait until the family Christmas picture. But there had been no more family Christmas pictures. Four months after the photo was taken, George was trying to catch pollywogs in the creek by their farm, with John nearby putting up fence posts. George was blue when they found him in the water.
That had been more than forty years ago. They had never discussed it. She and John had packed up the farmhouse and moved to Wichita within a week. For two years they lived in a small apartment with only one room and rusty pipes. She was never able to scrub out the rust stains from the porcelain sink. The floorboards creaked so badly that Patsy barely moved while she stayed at home all day, finding ways to silently iron, cook, and clean. As if any noise might remind her that George was dead.
Patsy pulled out the picture underneath the one of George. It was of her and her sons John Junior and Harold running in a sprinkler in front of a ranch-style home. On the back in her writing was: “Home. 1961. John Jr., 8. Harold, 6.” They had bought the house and moved out of the apartment as soon as she got pregnant with John Junior. The house had been built in a new subdivision. All the homes looked alike and had big grass yards. John fenced their yard in as soon as John Junior could walk. When the boys started elementary school, they wanted to take swimming lessons at the high-school pool with their friends, but John said that they couldn’t afford it. Patsy didn’t ask him about it. Instead, she and the boys spent the summer days running and jumping in the sprinkler.
The next photo was of John in his long-sleeved police uniform. She turned the photo over. It said, “Wichita, Fourth of July Parade, 1963,” in her handwriting. John had been on the force almost twelve years by then. He looked tired in his navy wool dress uniform. He had just made sergeant a few months earlier and the extra pay went into their mortgage.
The last photo had been taken just a year ago, during a family reunion at John Junior’s house in Albuquerque. Patsy sat in the middle. Her two sons on either side with their wives, her six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Seven-year-old Brittany was her youngest grandchild. John Junior’s young second wife had wanted more children. Patsy took off her glasses and looked at the picture more closely, the photo almost touching her nose. She smiled. She looked pretty good for an eighty-two-year-old great-grandma. But she looked odd standing with her family without John next to her.
She and John had retired to New Mexico six years ago to be near John Junior. They had searched for homes in Albuquerque but finally settled in Santa Fe, where the homes were more expensive but the higher altitude was better for John’s health. Within three years, he died of a stroke. Her friend Claire said that retirement had killed John. And Patsy thought that might be true. He had wandered around the house all day, thinking up projects to do and then not finishing them. Out in the garage, there were still some bookshelves he had been making.
She heard a noise out in the living room and limped out of her bedroom, once again trying Claire’s yoga breathing. It still didn’t work. The squealing was coming from the police scanner next to the easy chair, momentarily hurting Patsy’s hearing aid. She muted the volume on the TV and turned up the scanner.
“Medic One, 1225 San Francisco Street, elderly woman with chest pains.” Patsy wrote down the call in her journal and said a quick prayer for the woman.
Lucy drove around the block a few times before she found a parking space in the dim light. It was just after 11:30 P.M., but the streets around the Cowgirl bar were still filled with cars. She sat in the front seat, prepping herself in the rearview mirror; she reapplied her lipstick, brushed her hair, and tried to do something creative with her black eyeliner, managing only to poke herself in the eye. She wiped the eyeliner away, but now it looked like she had a case of pink eye. Very attractive. Oh well, at least the red made her eyes look more blue. Accentuate the positive, right? She bent over in her seat and adjusted her breasts in her bra—a burlesque move she had been doing since she was fourteen. When she sat back up, she had cleavage.
She got out of the car and headed through a wrought-iron gate that was almost off its hinges, past a cobblestone courtyard, and into the crouching adobe building. The Cowgirl was packed. She scanned the tables for the copy editors she was supposed to meet. The adobe-brick walls were painted a sickly salmon color and covered in 1950s photos of cowgirls in short fringed skirts and red lipstick. The chandeliers were made of the antlers of deer and steers. Behind the copper-tin bar was a brass wall hanging of a naked cowgirl lounging seductively on a saddle. It made Lucy think of chafing.
The crowd was a mix of locals taking advantage of dollarbeer night, tourists in town for the ski season, and convention goers with their name tags still on. A woman named Lisa Smiley—if her name tag was to be believed—walked by with four beers.
Lucy stood on the bottom rung of an empty bar stool to get a look over the crowd. The French had made up a word for someone her size: petite. And for that she was eternally grateful. She would have hated shopping in the “lady dwarf” section at Sears.
Lucy spotted the copy editors at a table in the corner. She made her way through the crowd and was about to sit down when she realized that the Capital Tribune copy editors weren’t alone—they were sitting with a group of reporters from the competing Santa Fe Times. Hell. Damn. She looked around to make sure Del wasn’t there. He wasn’t. Thank God. The table was split in half—women on one end and men on the other. She wiggled her way down toward the men.
In grade school, some students always sat in the front of the class and some always sat in the back; she always sat with the boys. Not because she was interested in them romantically—that became an issue only after she’d hit puberty—but because women made her uncomfortable. She could never figure out the social nuances. The female social system was too complex and required a set of emotional skills that she didn’t understand. And she was never very good at “girl things”—she hated shopping for clothes—and she loved action movies. Whenever she met a woman for the first time, Lucy always felt like she was skipping steps two through four in a required dance.
Men were easier. They made sense. She was never worried whether they were smarter than she or more clever—when it came to competing with men, she knew she would always win. With women she might not be the smartest or the prettiest; she might be average. She might be blah.
She was the middle child—sandwiched between two boys, a year apart on either side. She was neither the youngest nor the oldest. Stuck in limbo. To get noticed, she became the toughest, smartest, and funniest of the boys. She simply ignored the fact that she wasn’t a boy.
When Lucy was twelve, her mother took her to the Clinique counter at Macy’s to get a makeover. When Lucy wore her new makeup to school the next day, the boys made fun of her and gave her the once-over, but it was the girls’ reaction that was more interesting—they talked to her. They asked her about shades of eye shadow and how to apply mascara. That’s when she got it—look like a girl, act like a boy. Last week she had spent sixty dollars on a haircut—not to attract men but to impress women. Two girls at work had asked her who her hairstylist was; they’d talked for twenty minutes about hair dye and wondered out loud if Lucy should get highlights in her dark blond hair. Still, at best, all Lucy could manage to strike up was a casual acquaintanceship with a woman.
As Lucy approached the table, she made one of the male copy editors scoot his chair over when she sat down. The two male reporters on either side of her moved over as well. The women eyed her from the other end of the table. Lucy hoped it was a friendly look. The waitress came over and Lucy ordered a Sprite, not wanting to fall into another Monday-night drinking bout. Last Monday, she hadn’t gotten home until six A.M. and had to throw up for an hour before the bathroo
m stopped spinning. She’d felt like an idiot. Drinking that heavily in college was expected; when you’re twenty-eight, it’s bordering on alcoholism.
She listened to the Santa Fe Times reporters debate whether cheerleading was a sport while the waitress set the Sprite in front of her. She felt a hand reach under her hair to touch the back of her neck. Del Matteucci. She turned around. He was holding a beer and giving her that crooked smile that she loved. Damn.
“Where’s your woman?” she asked, her voice colder than she’d intended. Was she still that angry?
“She’s working late,” was all he said as he slipped into a chair next to her, left vacant by a copy editor heading off to the bathroom.
Lucy nodded and turned back to her Sprite, not able to think of anything else to say. They hadn’t really spoken that much since they broke up six months ago. They had seen each other. Said hi. The usual. But talk about the breakup? Never.
“You aren’t drinking?” he asked. She could smell the beer on him. She looked down at her Sprite.
“Actually, I’m just getting started.” She leaned over and draped her arm across the back of the sports reporter next to her, asking “What’s your favorite color?”
“Green,” he said and pulled her closer.
“Green it is.” She motioned to the waitress as Del watched her curiously.
“I want a green drink,” she told the waitress. Lucy smiled brightly as she turned back to the sports reporter. She knew what she was doing. Exacting her own sort of revenge. Flirt with all the boys and make Del watch. It was petty, but it would do. She needed alcohol for courage. She asked the sports reporter if she could use his shoulder as a pillow as the waitress showed up with something called a green iguana. It smelled of tequila and sweet-and-sour mix. She took a gulp. It didn’t make her throw up, so she took another.
An hour and three more colors later—red, orange, and blue—Lucy felt Del’s hand on her knee. It stopped her cold. She resisted the urge to move his hand higher up her thigh. She got up silently and went to the bathroom. Alone. She wished for a second that she had some version of a female friend, so that they could gab to each other about boys while they peed. She would have to manage this on her own.
Her boyfriend—she never quite remembered to put the “ex” in front of that—was hitting on her. Del was hitting on her. She had daydreamed of something like this. Of course, her fantasy involved him begging and crying. And beating on his chest in agony at her indifference. Make it very All My Children.
Two top-heavy blondes with Texas hair came tripping into the bathroom. They had tiny purses that matched their completely inappropriate sundresses. Had these women never heard of January? They jiggled their way into the bathroom stalls, talking about someone named Tracy.
Lucy stared back at herself the mirror, concentrating not on her face but on the weird reflection made by the salmon-colored walls. She had moved to Santa Fe a year ago for Del. He had wanted to come; she had wanted to stay in Florida. But she was in love. So they moved. She became night city editor at the Capital Tribune and he took a photography job at the Santa Fe Times. Six months later, they split up.
She washed her hands in the bathroom sink without thinking and crumpled a paper towel into the wastebasket. She crushed a few more paper towels into balls for good measure, resisting the urge to stomp them into the floor. She was too drunk to make sense of her feelings. And the blondes sounded like they were about to leave their stalls, so she took a deep breath and walked back to the table, stumbling a bit from the alcohol. She sat back down—next to Del, out of habit. He said, “Hey, baby,” in the sloppy language of drunks and leaned over to massage her shoulder with one hand, his other holding a Heineken. Something in Lucy quickened, not with pleasure but with rage. Fury. Wrath. All those good Old Testament words but with a tinge of heartbreak. How dare he? How dare he think that she would get drunk and go back to him as if nothing had happened? How dare he destroy her, unmake her, unmold her, and then come back for seconds?
Lucy had the Wonder Twins power that most women possess: the ability to flirt outrageously with a repulsive man. Or a despised man. There are various reasons women do it: It’s a power trip for the pretty, and it can be turned into a fast-acting man-bug repellent. Lucy always used it for the latter reason. The flirt-and-destroy combination had served her well in college. A man who assumes that women must kneel in worship when faced with his magnetism can be tortured into a bloody, humble pulp with charm and the right words. The girl starts with normal flirting, whispered tones, and a soft smile. Make him think he stands a chance. The amateurs will quickly begin to lick their lips and excessively toss their hair. The pros move right into an accidental brush-of-hand-against-back and a few well-placed out-of-corner-of-eye looks. If the girl is enjoying herself, she can continue; but Lucy usually stopped it at that point, using one swift word or phrase to cut the man. Not deep, but fatally. If the girl is very good, she can do all this within a matter of minutes. Lucy liked to think she was that good.
She grabbed Del’s bottle of beer out of his hand and took a sip of it while he watched. She fondled the long neck of the bottle as suggestively as she could. She frowned. She was a little too drunk to be convincing. Her timing was off. She put the bottle down and almost spilled it. She started to laugh. Maybe she wasn’t as good at this as she’d thought.
Del touched her hand on the table and said, “I’ve always loved your laugh.” He turned her palm up and traced her lifeline with his index finger, the touch giving her a shiver. “And I’ve always loved your hands,” he said.
“That’s not the only body part of mine that you’ve loved,” she said with an out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye glance.
“But it’s the only part I can love in public unless you want people to stare.”
“There’s a lot of fun things we can do in public with our hands. We just need to get imaginative.”
“Like what?”
Lucy switched her voice to that of a scolding schoolmarm. “Well, I can’t believe that you spilled your drink all over yourself.” She picked up a napkin and pretended to wipe off his shirt, her fingertips tracing a slow swirl across his neck, then slipping lower down on his chest, sneaking toward the waist of his pants, all the while saying “tsk, tsk,” in her schoolteacher tone. And all the while smiling.
He grabbed her wrist just as she was nearing his belt. “If you go any lower I’ll be spilling more than my drink.”
“Really? I’d like to be around for that.” Del’s face changed when she said that. What had been a boyish smile was replaced by the hard edge of lust.
“We can go back to my place,” he said in a low tone.
“Cockroaches are scared to go to your place,” she said back softly. They had always had this teasing tension. It was part of their sexual combat.
“You can come over and help me clean. Remember the time we spent all night dusting off the kitchen table?” He squeezed her hand—their fingers interlaced, their legs touching under the table. Lucy put her head on Del’s chest and took a deep breath. He smelled of cigarettes and sweet sweat.
She had him. She could crush him. Destroy him like he had destroyed her. All she had to do was go home with him, feed him a few more beers, and bring him to the edge. Slowly kiss his clothes off, but keep her own on. Then, as he stood there naked, anticipating, she could say, “Oh that’s right, we broke up,” and leave.
It was then that she realized what she wanted more than to destroy him: She wanted to get back together. That thought alone saved her.
She smiled up at him and pushed him away, saying, “How about instead I find you a ride home, and then tomorrow morning you call your girlfriend and buy her flowers for no reason.”
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday Morning
Detective Sergeant Gilbert Montoya of the Special Investigations Team shifted in his desk chair, his .45-caliber Smith & Wesson digging into his side. He pushed his gun belt lower on his waist and wished that he still ha
d his .357-caliber revolver. Six months ago the Santa Fe Police Department had switched to standardized weapons. Administration said that the stainless-steel Smith & Wesson, with its fixed sight and nine-shot magazine, was the weapon “best suited for the police mission”—at least according to the memo. The officers were still complaining about having to take three full-day training sessions in order to pass the shooting qualifications.
Gil had spent most of the morning entering reports. They had just finished a fairly routine drug murder the night before, with Gil in charge of the suspect interrogation, which took only a few hours. He looked at the clock on his desk. 8:22 A.M. He kept glancing at the time every few minutes until it said 8:30. Yesterday he had called fifteen minutes late and he could tell that she had been worried. His picked up his phone and hit speed dial. His mother answered with a weak “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, mi hito.” He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“How was church?” His mother went to morning Mass every day, walking the quarter mile down the dirt road to the small chapel.
“Just fine.” She paused a little and said, “Father Adam wants to know when you’re going to go to church again.”
“Mom, I go every Sunday with Susan and the girls to Santa María de la Paz. You know that.” This was a familiar conversation, one they had almost once a month. He was never quite sure if his mother was becoming senile and forgot that they had talked about it, or if she disapproved of Gil’s going to the newly built Santa María instead of driving the thirty miles every Sunday to their family church in Galisteo. The one his great-great-grandfather had helped build. Or at least paid to have built.
The Replacement Child Page 2
