Hell to Pay

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Chapter Eight

  Going through the familiar routine of his workday—an intense family meeting on behalf of one boy, a court appearance for another that was disappointingly canceled after a long wait—Jeremy finds that his thoughts keep wandering to Marin, and to Miguel and Carmen, and to Lucy.

  Why does it all have to be so complicated? Why can’t things just work out for a change?

  Yeah? Work out how, exactly?

  Marin wakes up tomorrow feeling all better and walks out of the psych hospital to live a fulfilling and productive life?

  Miguel and Carmen have their baby and live happily ever after?

  Lucy has our baby and we live happily ever after?

  Why does that last scenario suddenly seem as unlikely as the others?

  Why can’t he be the eternal optimist like his wife?

  Because I’ve been through hell and—

  And Lucy hasn’t?

  Not fair. She, too, has been through hell.

  But Lucy’s more resilient than most people. Somehow, she always manages to go right on living and hoping, no matter what life throws at her.

  Meanwhile, Jeremy, more and more often lately, wonders if he lacks a certain coping mechanism that would enable him to do that. And if so—is it any wonder? Look at his biological parents and siblings . . .

  Not every human condition is hereditary, he reminds himself, as he often does.

  So many are, though. He did a lot of reading on that topic when he was getting his masters . . . and afterward, too. In fact, quite a few of the books he’d carried with them from the old apartment were on the topic of mental health. Books he’s been thinking, lately, he should probably reread. Again.

  So, yeah, in addition to worrying about Marin’s mental state, he worries about his own, too. And he worries about his unborn child.

  Maybe I need to make an appointment with Dr. Kitzler. Or find someone new to see in the city.

  That’s probably the better option. It wouldn’t be easy to get up to Westchester for a psychiatry appointment anymore—especially after the baby comes.

  But starting over with someone new isn’t very appealing, either. Dr. Kitzler had known him so well . . .

  Just not well enough to realize what’s really been bugging me all these years.

  And that, in a nutshell, is why he can’t find a new shrink. He doesn’t want to go through that again—the constant fear that he’s going to slip up, say too much—and lose everything.

  He’s got to get through this on his own.

  He has a pounding headache by the time he finishes his last home visit and gets on the northbound Number Six train to the Bronx, where he has a group session scheduled for six-thirty. He’d been planning to head home right afterward, but maybe he’ll stick around and keep working on the grant he’s been writing.

  After all, Lucy won’t be waiting for him tonight. When he called her to check in a little while ago, she reminded him that she’s going out after work with her friend Robyn.

  She also told him that Carl Soto wants to come by tomorrow with their deposit check. “And he said he wants to talk to us about something.”

  Jeremy’s guard went up. “About what?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Did you tell him to go screw himself?” he asked—only he didn’t say “screw,” and regretted it immediately. He might be in a pissy mood, but he didn’t have to talk that way around Lucy.

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone before Lucy said, “We need to get our money back first. Then we’ll tell him to go screw himself.”

  She didn’t say “screw,” either.

  Jeremy grinned, loving his wife, and feeling his pissy mood brighten just a bit.

  That didn’t last long, though. Not on a rainy winter Friday on the heels of a depressing workday and an even more depressing visit to Parkview.

  As if those visits can possibly be anything but depressing.

  What’s he supposed to do, though? Stop going?

  If he doesn’t visit Marin, who will?

  Her friend Heather used to come, but she spends most of her time traveling abroad now that her physician husband is retired. Jeremy’s mother, Elsa, and his mother-in-law, Lauren, occasionally visit—though not lately. Lauren is down south with Sam, and Mom—well, it’s not like she’s right around the corner. Anyway, she’s had her hands full lately, dealing with the holidays and Sylvie’s death.

  It’s up to Jeremy to keep up the Friday visits to Parkview.

  “You’re all I have left,” Marin sometimes sobs, clinging to him like a frightened little girl.

  She hasn’t done that in a while, though. And today when he saw her, he noticed that she was much more withdrawn than she was even a few weeks ago.

  Jeremy wanted to talk to Wendy about that before he left today, but she was tied up with some kind of security issue.

  “An unauthorized person tried to get up here,” Alice, the nurse tending the desk, told Jeremy, who considered—and refrained from—making a bad joke about the irony of someone trying to break into a mental hospital. Wendy might have appreciated it, but Alice looked as though she hasn’t cracked a smile since her mother tickled her baby feet—if then.

  After stepping off the subway at the Soundview Avenue station, Jeremy descends the stairs to the street and raises the collar of his jacket against the wet wind. The Kinks’ song “Father Christmas” is running through his head again.

  He stops at a pizzeria a block away in the shadow of the elevated subway tracks. Colored lights, a plastic menorah, and an Italian flag share equal space in the plate-glass window.

  “Jeremy! Bro, how’s it going?” The young man behind the counter—whose family owns the place—gives him a high five.

  “Girardo, how’ve you been?”

  “Pretty good. Did I tell you I enlisted?”

  The military is one way out of this poverty-stricken neighborhood—and Jeremy prays it won’t be a one-way ticket for Girardo, who tells him he’s hoping to see active service in the Middle East.

  Patriotic, brash, convinced of his own immortality . . . Girardo wants to be a hero.

  Don’t we all.

  Standing at the counter, Jeremy gobbles a couple of slices of pizza before heading over to the group home.

  Boys’ voices echo in the corridors, whooping it up as is typical on a Friday night. Quite a few of them greet him with a jovial “Hey, Coach” as they pass, while others barely acknowledge him, lost in their own troubles. More of the usual.

  The garland-draped door to his office is closed and locked. Opening it, he notices that things are looking buttoned up on Jack’s side of the tiny room. He must have left for the day, eager, as always, to get home to his wife and newborn son, whose pictures decorate Jack’s cluttered desk and bulletin board.

  “You’ll be doing the same thing pretty soon,” he recently told Jeremy, aware of Lucy’s pregnancy—though not of the two miscarriages. The first had taken place before Jack started working here, and the second early in a pregnancy that Jeremy had not yet shared with his colleagues.

  Ordinarily, he enjoys the camaraderie with Jack, but today, Jeremy welcomes the solitude. His desk is stacked with paperwork as usual, and he has to prepare for the scheduled group meeting, and—

  What’s that?

  He spots a piece of paper on the floor just past the threshold. He picks it up, unfolds it, and sees that it’s a note, scrawled in pencil on a ragged-edged sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper.

  Coch I am working till 8 but I need u to tawk to Carmen 4 me be4 its to late.

  The period at the end of the sentence is the lone punctuation, and the only signature is a seven-digit phone number.

  Miguel’s cell phone?

  Or Carmen’s?

  Suddenly, Jeremy wishes Jack were her
e after all. He wouldn’t mind running the circumstances by someone other than his supervisor, Cliff Sutter—without using names, of course. Miguel came to him privately with personal information, and Jeremy, as a social worker, is bound to uphold that confidence. Technically, though, Miguel has committed a crime, complicating the ethics of the situation and Jeremy’s role in it.

  “Coach?”

  Jeremy looks up to see one of his basketball players standing in the doorway. “Hey, Leland, what’s up?”

  “When is that form due for the team dinner? Because I can’t find mine . . .”

  With a sigh, Jeremy folds Miguel’s note in half and shoves it into his pocket. It will just have to wait until later.

  Lucy met Robyn Gillery—now Robyn Hanover—on their first day of kindergarten at Glenhaven Park Elementary School. They looked so much alike that the teacher thought they were twin sisters. At least, that’s what she claimed, and it broke the ice.

  These days, Robyn—who works in fashion merchandising and married serious money—dyes her hair blond, wears full makeup, and dresses in designer clothes.

  While no one would ever mistake her and Lucy for sisters at a glance, their friendship has endured. But that’s how it is with Lucy. She’s always taken her relationships seriously; she doesn’t let people in unless they’re keepers.

  “Do you realize we’ve known each other for a quarter of a century?” Lucy asks Robyn as they settle into a back booth at La Margarita, their favorite place to meet for . . . well, margaritas. Not that Lucy will be having one tonight.

  “A quarter of a century?” Robyn echoes. “When you put it that way you make me feel old.”

  “How do you think I feel? I’m even older.”

  “By three whole weeks.”

  “Two weeks and five days.” At Robyn’s arched brow, Lucy grins. “Hey, when you get to be my age, you’ll realize that every day counts.”

  “Ladies, long time no see.” Hugo, their favorite waiter, turns up with menus and ice water. “Can I get you started with some drinks?”

  Robyn orders a margarita, straight up, with salt.

  Lucy orders seltzer with lime.

  “You know, one cocktail won’t kill you,” Robyn tells her as Hugo walks away.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought—you look tense.”

  “Bad day at work.” Lucy shrugs, not wanting to get into what’s really bothering her. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Robyn, but what she really needs right now is an escape.

  “I’m sure it didn’t help that you and Jeremy found yourselves homeless at Christmastime with a baby on the way.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I’m not the first woman that’s ever happened to,” she quips. “And it worked out pretty well for Mary and Joseph, so . . .”

  Robyn smiles and shakes her head. “Your optimism never ceases to amaze me, Lu. How have you been feeling lately?”

  “Nauseously optimistic or optimistically nauseated, depending on the moment.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Yeah. It is good.”

  “When I was pregnant, I was so miserable that I was seriously worried Tom was going to leave me.”

  “That would never happen.” Robyn’s husband, a financial analyst, is as crazy about her as she is about him.

  “No, because he knows that if he left, I’d last about two seconds on my own.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You know it is.”

  Lucy grins. “Okay—maybe it is.”

  “Good thing I’m not like you, Lu, or he really might have left.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “No, what I mean is, you’re totally self-sufficient. If Jeremy walked out the door tomorrow and never came back, you’d survive on your own without a problem. And I mean that as a compliment.”

  “Thanks again—I think. So tell me . . . how’s Ardyn?”

  “Are you trying to change the subject?”

  “Absolutely, because—I know this is hard to believe—but I don’t really feel like talking about what would happen if my husband walked out the door tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry—I’m such a clod. Consider the subject gladly changed—to my favorite subject, as you know. Ardyn is amazing.”

  “Do you have any pictures?”

  “Are you kidding?” Robyn reaches into her enormous purse and pulls out her iPhone. She presses a button and hands the phone across the table.

  Lucy scrolls through a gallery of pictures of her friend’s baby, now eight months old. She can’t help but feel a pang, seeing Ardyn smiling, sleeping, sitting up, playing with blocks . . .

  The first time Lucy got pregnant, Robyn was, too. Their firstborns were supposed to be the same age. They were supposed to play together, go to school together, become BFFs, just like Lucy and Robyn are.

  “She’s so beautiful, Robyn.” Lucy hands the phone back across the table.

  “You’re the best, Lu. I mean, I know how hard it must be for you . . .”

  It is. Excruciating. But she’s not going to show it.

  If the tables were turned, she’d want to share pictures of her own beautiful baby and she’d want Robyn to be happy for her, wouldn’t she?

  Absolutely.

  And someday, you’re going to have that chance, just you wait.

  Yeah . . . she’s getting sick of waiting. But that’s all she can do. Wait, and hope, and do everything in her power to stay pregnant until her February due date.

  Pacing, she waits for some sign of life to appear in the apartment above, but her computer screen shows only silent, empty scenes. The Cavalons should have been home from work by now—Lucy, at least. Where is she?

  What if something went wrong with the pregnancy? What if she lost the baby?

  “Don’t think that way,” Chaplain Gideon scolds. “This child is strong enough now to survive outside the womb. It will be born in just a few more days.”

  Yes. Just a few more . . .

  Five, to be exact.

  “But you have to control yourself until then. You can’t take any more chances. Not like last night.”

  “That had to be done! Matthew 24:11! ‘And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.’ He had to be destroyed!”

  “Yes, but you took needless risks. The maid—”

  “I silenced her so that she won’t talk.”

  “And now you’re thinking about doing it again. Admit it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You’re thinking about doing it to Ryan. That’s why you didn’t want to see him tonight. You were afraid you wouldn’t be able to control yourself.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. It was true.

  But Chaplain Gideon is right. She needs Ryan Walsh around—for five more days.

  On Christmas Eve, he’s going to lead her right to his sister Lucy—and the baby.

  Hopewell Junction is about seventy-five miles and an hour and a half’s drive—two hours, with traffic—away from Parkview Hospital. Some days, that’s not nearly enough distance between the two.

  Wendy Nevid would love to put this particular Friday behind her and enjoy the weekend, but she can’t seem to get past the nagging memory of what happened this morning.

  That woman . . . the one who tried to get onto the fourth floor . . . there was something about her . . .

  “One more story, Mommy?” Ethan begs, and Wendy obliges. But the whole time she’s reading, she’s hearing that voice.

  I’m here to visit my uncle.

  If she hadn’t said that—if she hadn’t mistakenly assumed Darryl Gaus was a man—Wendy would have let her go about her business in 402.

  Which was . . . what?

  The hospital’s security people contacted Darryl’s sister Kyle, who visi
ts nightly, and told her about the incident. Kyle had no idea who the woman might have been—or why anyone would be trying to see—or harm—Darryl, a paranoid schizophrenic with no close friends and no other living relatives.

  “One more story, Mommy?”

  Realizing she’s just read “the end,” Wendy smiles and shakes her head. “You have to get up early tomorrow morning for swimming lessons, Ethan.”

  After kissing him good night and looking in on Julia down the hall, she goes to the kitchen to fix a cup of tea. Decaf. She has a feeling she might have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

  Why is this bothering me so much?

  Actually, she knows why.

  But maybe she’s wrong. Maybe her mind is just playing tricks on her.

  She couldn’t take it anymore—being in that cramped little apartment, watching still-life frames on her computer screen, waiting for the Cavalons to appear.

  So she bundled herself up, and she left, not certain where she was going until she got outside into the raw, misty December night.

  Then she knew where she wanted to go. Where she had to go.

  Now, for the second time today, she strides through Manhattan with a purpose, shouldering her way past pedestrians, scurrying across Broadway just before the light changes so as not to break her stride.

  Up one block, over one, across another broad avenue . . .

  This time, unlike this morning, she’s not following anyone.

  The pavement is shiny from the earlier rain and bustling with people and traffic. Holiday shoppers tote bags from one store to another, and festive noise and sidewalk smokers spill from restaurant doorways. She passes rows of fragrant, fresh-cut evergreen trees lined up in sidewalk stands that are strung with overhead bulbs. She passes plate-glass storefronts decorated with tinsel and lights, as are some apartment balconies and windows high above the street.

  Holy Trinity Church is located a stone’s throw from the Museum of Natural History, on a relatively quiet side street lined with stately brownstones.

  She pauses for a moment, looking up at the old stone church, with its stained glass windows and towering spire. Massive double doors, at the top of broad concrete steps, are hung with matching Christmas wreaths—fresh boxwood, with red velvet bows.