But I had to find a direction of my own now.
At some point on Wednesday night I had to sleep. I was weary, but not sleepy. My computer was open and I’d been typing what I remembered as fast as I could and then stopped to stare at her words on the rectangle of white in front of me in the darkened room. Like fence marks on a distant field of snow. My mind wandered to the New Hampshire fields I had just seen so recently. My friend Gary had found what he wanted there. I suppose it was not always so bad to get what you wanted. I could easily want something like that myself if I had better sense.
There are several curses, usually attributed to the Chinese. My father used to use the phrases so often I assumed them to be Irish when I was a boy.
‘May you live in interesting times. May you come to the attention of those in authority. May you find what you are looking for.’ They have that quality of back-handedness which feels like something out of Oscar Wilde or Ambrose Bierce. Bierce, Yes. More American than Irish.
But the thought was this: even if I find Des, is she what I am looking for? Or will it be like my search for the story of Mary Andrews, something I did not understand from the first.
The time at the top of the screen was 3:29 AM.
In the morning, at nine, the girls were coming by. Susannah had called, sounding suddenly like Mary Ellen, and told me to shave when I got up because she and her sisters were coming over to take me to breakfast. It was their way of making up for my not being with them for Thanksgiving dinner. Very sweet, whether I had gotten any sleep or not. And then there was Becky.
Becky had called as well. She was making a turkey. In her own words, “You should not let this feat go to waste.”
I said, “You mean ‘feast.’”
“No.” she said, “I mean ‘feat. Whether you come or not, at the over-ripe age of forty-eight, I’m going to cook the first goddamn Thanksgiving turkey I have ever made in my life. I would appreciate not having to deal with it all by myself.”
I was bound, after all—indentured as much as young Cary Peet by my debts to others. At the very least, Thanksgiving was worthy of giving thanks for what I had.
19. Confrontations
I was feeling blue.
Doddie Parker died in his sleep. It was the right way to go, but I wasn’t happy about it. His oldest son Bill called me. The wake will be on the Tuesday. He’ll to be buried the Thursday after Thanksgiving.
Doddie Parker was eighty-eight years old. The oldest of six kids and the last alive. He had been with the Marines at Pusan and was wounded there. He had worked for General Electric and then Raytheon for forty years, mostly as a quality control manager, retired, and then spent “the best years of my life” collecting the bits and pieces of history he loved more than money. He had three sons. His wife Marge was a passable cook and an excellent card player. He was diabetic at the end, but there really was no reason to feel sorry for him. I just felt blue over my own loss.
What I wanted was a little human companionship.
Perhaps I could have gone to Burley’s for Thanksgiving. His mom is a wicked cook and still directs the kitchen traffic at home. But Becky’s request had struck me as something better. I knew what was on my mind, but I wasn’t going to feel guilty about that. Besides. The food couldn’t be that bad. She’s a perfectionist. I was willing to bet she’d cook two turkeys, just to make sure she got one right. She did that with a lasagna she made for me in July.
And I’m not that stupid. I know she’s keeping an eye on me. God knows why.
The doorbell rang on Thanksgiving morning a little early. I assumed it was the girls and that was a little irritating. I was still shaving. They were going to take me out for breakfast, and I was looking forward to the pancakes because I can’t seem to make a good batter just for myself these days—but I was tired. I’d only managed to get a couple of hours of sleep. And I’m not as young as I used to be. A common thought in my head these days.
I went downstairs to let them in, but the face through the glass was a new one. And it was blank. Like a kid staring at his history teacher at about 2:25 in the afternoon in the tenth grade. That blank. But this guy is at least forty. About five foot eight not counting the thick soles. Slightly overweight but not flabby. Good shoulders. His hair is slicked back. No hat. He has his hands in his pockets. The black wool coat looks expensive. Like it was from Louis, downtown, but off the rack.
I open the door right up, but I use my left hand. My right hand is in the pocket of my robe. I have a firm grip on my cell phone. It’s all I had. Besides, if he has a gun and he’s going to shoot me, he doesn’t need me to open the door.
I say, “What can I do for you?”
He says, “You John Finn?”
I nod.
He says, “My name is Fabian Lugano.”
My brain had just gotten to him in the catalog of possibilities.
I say, “I hear we were neighbors.”
He frowns. “How’s that?”
I say, “I grew up in Hingham. I hear you’re from Scituate. Small world.”
His frown dissolves and it’s back to the blank face. I’m not sure where he learned the act. Maybe at the movies. In any case, it makes me smile.
He says, “Don’t be cute.”
I shrug. I say again, “So what can I do for you?”
He says, “You’ve been using my name around.”
I frown now. Not an unhappy frown. My best, ‘What are you talking about?’ frown. My daughters are going to be showing up pretty soon. I want to get this over with as quick as possible. I say, “Not likely. A friend of yours was acting like a jerk. I just made it clear to him that his habits are known, and he ought to be more polite.”
Fabian says, “What makes you so smart?”
I shrug again. “Common knowledge. I’ve got no interest in that. Just your friend Higgins. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about the people who work for him. That’s not the way to be.”
My guess is that because this guy’s a middleman, he’s not a full-blown thug. He has some people skills. Thuggery is bad for that kind of business. He has to make jerks like Higgins feel comfortable as they shell out their fresh bills for a little white powder.
Fabian is frowning now. I think he’s losing his footing on the matter. He says, “You mean the girl?”
Now I’m curious. Why does Fabian know about Desiree? Even barefooted, this puts me back on my heels a bit.
I say, “Do you know Des?”
He says, “None of your business.”
I say, “Crap.” It just came out. Two hours of sleep limited my self-control.
Fabian reacts too quickly to that. He says, “She tell you about me?”
Or maybe he’s simply stupid. I took a breath on the thought. I said, “I didn’t know until just now that she had any idea you existed.”
Now my legs are getting cold. I have nothing on under the robe and the cold in the vestibule is welling up where I don’t want it. The shaving cream is getting stiff on my face. I clinched my jaw on a shiver, but I think he saw it. I don’t know what’s going on—in his head or otherwise.
He misinterprets the shiver. He says, “So, this is the deal. I don’t want to hear about you ever again. From nobody. Understand?”
My jaw was already clinched. I couldn’t help the way I said what I did.
“No deal. Not with me. I’ll tell you what. My deal. I’ll leave you alone if you tell me everything you know about Des. Everything. Otherwise you got a lot a grief you don’t need. I hear you’ve got a kid coming. You’ve got some good coming then. Don’t screw it. Give me a call.”
I could see my daughters coming up the steps. He turns at the sound and looks at them. I still have no idea what he’s thinking. If he takes too long, I’m going to break his right collarbone so he can’t get the gun out of his pocket. Instead, he turns all the way and pulls the outer door open for them and waits until they are all in the vestibule before he says a word.
Then he says, “You’ll h
ear from me.”
His words get lost in my daughters talking at me all three at once. Then he’s down the steps and into a double-parked navy-blue Cadillac.
I give him that. The navy blue looks better than the black.
The girls didn’t give me much of a chance to dwell on any of that for the next few hours. We had our breakfast at a great place over on Broadway. It was the first time the girls had all been together in awhile, so they talked non-stop, mostly to each other. I think they figured they already know what I’ve been up to. I’m consistent, I’ve been told. But I was happy enough just to listen. Matty managed to ask her older sisters all the questions I would have anyway.
I was the oldest guy in the cafe. Everyone else looked like they were probably going to school at Tufts. But the pancakes were good and the coffee was good enough.
It was after noon by the time I was at home again, trying to sort it out. I wrote down what I knew. I wrote down what I thought could be the case. The part of my brain that wants to make things up was over active. Other than for one reason, it was difficult to imagine why Des might know Fabian Lugano. When it was time to leave, I walked. I think I was hoping for some inspiration along the way.
Becky made a nice small turkey. It looked like a picture in a magazine. She was obviously very pleased with herself. The stuffing was okay but not as good as Mary Ellen’s. Still. More than just an ‘A’ for effort
She was very talkative. She brought up a couple of times we had at school in Amherst I’d forgotten about. She wanted to know about my brother. I used to tell stories on him all the time. Mostly lies. They were just ways to talk about myself, I suppose. Then she brought up the house in Maine. It was her true home as a girl, and it belonged to her now. Her mother had left it to Becky in the will. I had never met Mrs. Sawyer, and now that I've heard a few stories, I'm sorry I missed her. But then, the stories were about Becky as much as they were about her mother. I guess that was the point. She was trying to fill in some gaps. Last August had been Becky's first time there alone. “You really should have come up to Maine. It was very nice. It only rained four days out of five. We could have finished all the boxed puzzles on the shelf.”
I laughed a little harder at that. I think she knew why. I would never have met Des if I had gone. I think she might even have been hinting in that direction with the comment.
So I admitted that, “Maybe I should have.”
She wore a light green and blue dress that reached her ankles. Probably silk. It was pretty spectacular. The last time I saw her in a dress it was the 4th of July.
She said, “There were no strings, John. Then or now.”
I had the contrary thought. I subscribed to my own sort of string theory now. I said, “The strings in life have a way of getting knotted up. You wonder how anybody gets along.”
She said, “Ignore the knots. And the warts. It’s the only way. I’ve learned that much, at least. That and now how to cook a turkey.”
I added, “You make a good lasagna too.”
That pleased her.
I had told Becky about Des in September when she’d gotten back from Maine and we had gone out for lunch. She had taken the information like an unexpected notice from the IRS. A lot of silence. I didn’t hear from her again until she called in October with some ideas about Izaak Andrews and his murdered daughter Mary. That time she had even slipped in a quick inquiry about “your new girlfriend.”
I had spoken to Becky three times since Halloween. Once, ostensibly about what else I had found concerning the Andrews family, but again there was an inquiry about Des. I had told her about the disappearance then. I was upset then. The disappearance was fresh and I had just gone to Desiree’s apartment for the first time. When Becky called about a week later, she asked about Des again. She seemed concerned more about Desiree than about me so I told her everything I knew at that point. It was just good to run through the thing end to end rather than to keep turning it in a circle in my own head. The next time Becky called was when she invited me over for Thanksgiving dinner.
She didn’t mention Des until we were eating a sweet cranberry dessert she had found the recipe for in an old book. You can’t go wrong with maple syrup and custard. After two helpings of dinner, my mood had brightened considerably. I was telling her about a cranberry bog down near Carver where I had worked clearing brush one summer when I was in high school. I got a good case of poison ivy the very first week. It was an unpleasant memory but it made a funny story, especially after I told her about my failed attempt to seduce a local girl while covered with a dried crust of calamine lotion.
Then Becky got serious. “I don’t blame your little cranberry girl for not showing up to scratch you in the right places. But Des. . .” Her voice dropped and she gave me a look I swear I saw in my mother’s eye a thousand times when she wanted me to listen. “Des is another matter. I can’t believe she would have simply disappeared.”
“No.” It was all I could say. I had thought that circle around a few times. It was the same conclusion.
What she said next took me by surprise. “I think she loved you, John.”
The surprise was, of course, that she had even said it; not the thought that was in my head like a dull ache. I just didn’t expect it from Becky.
I said, “Why do you think that? Intuition?”
She smiled oddly. It was not embarrassment. It was extreme discomfort. “No. Maybe a bit. I’m not fond of intuition. It never did me any good. I think it because she said it to me, and I believed her.”
I did not say ‘crap.’ I could have. I dropped my spoon loud enough on her nineteenth century Wedgewood to have put a chip in it.
“When?”
She shook her head with the reluctance to tell me. She had opened the door. I waited.
She took an extra breath like she’ll do before starting in on something involved. “I just wanted to meet her. I wanted to see what I was up against. That’s all. When you first told me about her—in that instant—I went from all kinds of girlish fantasies, right back to being a very middle-aged woman. I felt like something wonderful I had found again had just been stolen.” She looked up to see how I had taken that last revelation and then quickly away again. This was not the Becky I was used to. She was clearly not happy with herself about any of this. She said, “I tried to be very mature about it. I tried for weeks. But I couldn’t handle it. It was on my mind all the time. You were on my mind. . . And you know, I had an inkling, when you told me you couldn’t come up to the island in August. I knew you’d really wanted to before. You practically asked. But I had needed some time to think, first. I wanted to be sure of myself.” A spark of self-defensive adrenalin kicked in. She looked at me squarely. “Yes. I see that look on your face. You know it’s all a stupid front. I’m not always so sure of myself. You can’t make it in this world letting people know you aren’t sure of things. It’s because they want the assurance for themselves.” She shook her head at the hopelessness, “I should have called you that first night I was on the island. I knew then that I wanted you there with me. But no. I had to stick to my plan. And then—and then it was too late. I’d let you slip away. . . Again.”
I had to at least smile at that.
“This is very good for my ego, you know. Like, I’m the prize fish. But then I just have to remember what happens to the fish after he gets caught.”
She squinted her eyes at me over my own hopelessness.
“Yes. Well. It should be. You probably aren’t worth all the trouble you cause.” Her face briefly started a smile, then stopped. “So I bided my time. My hope was that she’d just appealed to your libido at the right moment, when I was not around to beat her off with a stick. You’d get tired of her. That was my hope. I just needed to keep the door open, so to speak. No. That mixes the metaphors, doesn’t it?” She gave me a look of a child caught in the act. “But then the weeks passed. You were on my mind all the time. It wasn’t doing my research any good. And I had her number. Rig
ht there on the message pad. I’d torn the sheet off that was underneath when you wrote her number down that day she had called you in my office. I didn’t know who it was, but I had a feeling. It was a very odd thing to do, but I kept it. Maybe that was intuition. I don’t know. But when it became clear that you were on her hook, so to speak, I called her. I told her I wanted to speak with her.”
I was astounded. Truly astonished. “What did she say?”
Becky kept her eyes away from mine. “She said, no. Actually, she said, ‘Are you serious?’ But I insisted.”
Most people have a well practiced set of facial expressions they start using when they are babies. They do them because they work. It’s part of the communication process. Pretense or not, they’re part of what we want to say. I’d just had a chance to watch my girls do some familiar mugging earlier that day. I’ve been watching them do their separate acts for years. Becky has a good set of faces for nearly every occasion, some of which she’s obviously developed in the classroom. They are a lot like Mary Ellen’s, actually. It cuts down of the need to speak to a bunch of students, I suppose, when you want to save your words for better things. But looking at Becky’s face, I had no idea what was on her mind at that moment. I had never seen that look on her before. The distress was all in her eyes. And I can only guess the kind of dumbstruck look that was on mine.
“Where?”
“At a Starbucks. I wanted to take her to lunch, but she wasn’t interested. She was angry with me for calling her in the first place. I think she thought I was going to harass her or something of the sort. But it was a good talk. I said what I thought needed saying. I told her . . . I loved you . . . and about our past. I think she understood right away that I just wanted to know if this was some kind of fling for her. . . . And I don’t think it was. Unfortunately for me, I think she was quite taken with you. God knows why. As Jean Arthur would say, ‘You’re a big lug.’”
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