by Jan Burke
“It washed out. Eventually.”
“The times I put shoe polish on the rims of the eyepieces of your binoculars, so that when Andre took you to a hockey game, you—”
“—looked like a raccoon until Andre finally broke down and told me why people were laughing at me. Yes. An old trick, but Andre was deeply amused.”
“Actually, I think most of them were old tricks. The plastic wrap beneath the toilet seat, salt in your cola—”
“Makes it foam up, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, there was also the time I put laxative in your coffee.”
I made a face. “That was one of the worst.”
“If Irene was reading an article in a magazine and got interrupted,” she told Rachel, “I’d tear out the last page of the story.”
“That one was irritating, but at least it didn’t ruin my day.”
“You see, a brat.”
I shrugged. “You were just trying to get my attention. I wasn’t an angel when I was twelve, and I didn’t expect you to be one. Besides, you were treating me the way I treated my older sister. I figured I was doing penance.”
“I don’t know about the penance, but you’re absolutely right about the attention.” She turned to Rachel. “I was devastated when Irene moved to Bakersfield. She was one of my favorites. I really hated Alicia.”
“Alicia?” Rachel asked.
“Alicia Penderson,” I said. “A girl I had known since grade school, was the one who—”
I caught myself, but Lisa just laughed. “She was the one who was in bed with my father when Irene whipped his butt with a fishing pole!”
She saw our mutual discomfort and said, “Oh, please! I’ve been an adult for years now, Irene. You don’t need to act embarrassed about the fact that I knew about my father’s sexual activities. Lots of sounds carry up along that heating vent to the attic.”
“Maybe I’m still a little old-fashioned about some things,” I said. “I know you didn’t get it all from eavesdropping through the furnace. Your father thought it was oh-so-progressive to tell you things most parents keep from their children. I think you had to grow up a little too fast as a result.”
“Nothing can be done about it now,” she said. “I survived. I didn’t turn out so badly, did I?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “Not at all. I’m very proud of you.”
She looked down at the table, turning a deep shade of red.
“Nothing to blush about,” I said. I turned to Rachel. “Lisa graduated from high school when she was fifteen—”
“You told me you graduated early,” Lisa said.
“Only a semester early. And I wasted it completely. If I hadn’t taken college classes during a couple of summer sessions, I might still be an undergrad. You, on the other hand, finished your master’s degree when you were nineteen—and graduated with honors.”
“You’re a sociologist, like your father?” Rachel asked.
“Oh no. My life is in politics. But I did get a degree in sociology.”
“There seems to be a family love of the subject,” I said. “Her brother is also a sociologist.”
“Are you close to your brother?” Rachel asked.
She hesitated for a moment before saying, “Close? No. He’s six years older than I am—”
Rachel glanced over at me. “You dated a guy who had a son your age?”
“Thank you, Rachel,” I said dryly. “Jerry’s three years younger than I. He was just starting college when I was about to graduate.”
“Oh, I see. You were much older then.”
“Don’t give Irene a hard time,” Lisa said. “My father’s conquests are legion—and most of the women were in their twenties when he met them.”
“I’m not sure I’ve been defended,” I said. “To go back to Rachel’s question—I think age differences didn’t matter so much as the fact that he grew up in a different household.”
“You’re right. Jerry’s my half-brother, Rachel. For the most part, he lived with his mother, and I lived with mine. But he sometimes spent months at my father’s house, and he lived with Andre all summer, every summer. When I was young, I was very jealous of him, of course. Eaten up with envy. I would have loved to have had one-thousandth of the attention he received from Andre. For a while, when I was in school, we grew further apart. But in the last few years, we’ve started to get to know one another again.”
We shifted to less volatile subjects, eventually leaving the table to make ourselves more comfortable near the fireplace.
“I should be getting home,” Lisa said at about eleven o’clock. “Oh, by the way, Roland Hill said that he would talk to you if you called tomorrow.”
“How did you ever get him to agree to do that?” I asked.
She smiled. “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t get a little cooperation from people like Roland Hill.”
The phone rang as I was about to thank her. The machine picked it up before I could get to it.
“This the Irene Kelly that called here earlier?” a voice asked over the speaker.
I quickly picked up the phone and said, “Yes, it is,” to the twenty-third Monroe.
19
THIS IS JUNE MONROE. Are you the reporter who’s going to help my son?”
Her son. Oh hell, I thought, my mouth suddenly dry. I glanced over my shoulder to see Rachel and Lisa watching me intently. I hunched closer to the phone, took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you, Mrs. Monroe, but I’d rather speak to you in person.”
“Hmm. This sounds like trouble to me. Have Lucas call me, then maybe I’ll talk to you. But I need to talk to him first.”
“I’m afraid—I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why not?” She paused, then added, “Don’t tell me he’s fallen off the—” She caught herself, but I knew what she had started to ask.
“No,” I said. “He hasn’t been drinking.”
“Oh? Then what’s making you sound so nervous?”
“Could you hold on, please? I need to switch phones.”
I excused myself from my guests for a moment; Cody followed me back into the bedroom, where I picked up the extension. I waited while Rachel hung up the kitchen extension.
“Mrs. Monroe?”
“I’m still here.”
“I need to talk to you about Lucas, but I don’t want to do it over the phone. It’s late now, but—”
“Late to you, maybe. I work nights. This is the middle of the day.”
Cody jumped up onto my lap. I stroked his fur, trying to steady my nerves, while my mind frantically sought a way to gently handle this situation. “You’ll be up for a while, Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’d like to drive out to see you.”
“Now? A white woman planning on coming all the way to Riverside from Las Piernas at eleven o’clock at night, just to talk to some old black woman?” She paused, but before I could reply, she said, “What has happened to Lucas?”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make my voice work.
“I asked you, what has happened to him?”
“Please, Mrs. Monroe—”
“Don’t you ‘please Mrs. Monroe’ me. You’ve got me worried past all reason now. I don’t like it. You drive out here, it will take you at least an hour to get to my place. What am I going to do all that time except worry?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Cody batted at the phone cord.
“Just tell me,” she said, but her voice was softer now.
“I’m a stranger to you, Mrs. Monroe. I knew Lucas many years ago—”
“He’s told me all about you. You were one of his students. You don’t know me, but he’s been telling me a lot about you. Lucas trusts you. He leads a lonesome life now; he doesn’t trust many people. But he trusts you. That’s good enough for me.”
“I don’t deserve it
,” I whispered, and never meant anything so sincerely in all my life.
“God will be the judge of that, as He will be of all of us. My son may have a few problems, but he’s smart. I’ve never seen a child so smart as he was. He’s straightening out now, getting himself on the right path. Just like I knew he would,” she said. “I have always known it. Charles—his older brother—thinks I’m crazy, but he just doesn’t know Lucas like I do.”
“I didn’t even know he had a brother,” I said. Oh, yes, I thought. Let’s talk about his brother, his uncles, his cousins—about anything but what has happened to your hopes.
“Well, now, never mind that. Let’s just talk about Lucas,” she said, taking up the reins as if she had heard my thoughts and feared I would bolt.
“I wanted to find Lucas,” I began, voice unsteady. “I don’t think he was ready to talk to me yet, but I needed to ask him about a photograph.”
I paused, but she didn’t offer any comment on the photo, so I went on.
“I was also worried about him. He hadn’t been to the shelter for a few days. I called a friend of mine who—well, let’s just say she works with the homeless every now and then. We asked around; talked to a lot of people who knew him, men who live on the streets. No one had seen him since Thursday.”
Silence. Cody’s purring not enough of a comfort.
“Eventually someone gave us some information that led us to an abandoned hotel. We found Lucas there.”
“Was he hurt?” she asked, and I knew she wanted that to be the problem, knew that she had already somehow heard the truth before I spoke it.
“No. He was—he was in one of the rooms. Up high, one of the highest floors. He was lying there, very peacefully.”
She made a short, high-pitched keening sound.
“His heart,” I managed to choke out.
“No… not Lucas. Not Lucas!” she said, again and again and again.
When I thought June Monroe might hear me, I said, “You shouldn’t be alone. Is there anyone who can be with you tonight?”
“You’re going to be with me. I’m coming down there right now, you understand?”
I did. Perfectly. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, anyway.
“I’ll call Charles. He’ll take me down there. You’re going to take us to see my boy. I’ll call you right back.”
She hung up. I sat there numbly until the phone rang in my hand.
As I held up the receiver, an angry voice came from it. “What the hell is wrong with you, calling my mother up and telling her something like that on the phone?”
“Your mother called me. And I didn’t want to tell her—”
“All I got to say to you is, this damn well better be my brother. If it’s anyone else, you’re gonna find yourself in so much mess, you’re gonna wish you were in a refrigerated drawer right next to Mr. John Doe.”
“Listen, I’m sorry about your brother—”
“Save your ‘sorry,’ bitch.”
I was on the verge of hanging up in his ear when I thought of his mother. I owed it to Lucas and to her to keep my mouth shut. I only half-listened as he spouted off a mixture of anger and abuse; it occurred to me that a lot of it was predicated on the assumption that I must have misidentified the body. If my sister, Barbara, had been lying in a faraway morgue, I probably would have held on to a similar thought—as fiercely, if not in quite the same way.
When it looked as if he would not wind down any time soon, I said, “I can give you directions, or I can let you figure it out on your own. But while you sit here giving me a hard time, your mother is alone. Either way, I’m off this phone in about another thirty seconds.”
He used about five of those seconds to brood, then said, “Give me the damned directions.”
WHEN I EMERGED from the bedroom, Lisa was at the door, just waiting to wish me a final good night before going home. I apologized for being tied up on the phone so long.
“Was that Lucas Monroe’s mother?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, surprised.
“I saw Roberta today. She told me Lucas had died of a heart attack, and that she didn’t even know how to contact his family. That seemed so awful; I’m so glad you were able to help. Hard on you, though, isn’t it?”
Her face was full of sympathetic concern. “I didn’t know you knew Lucas,” I said.
“He worked with my father. He was an unforgettable person. Very bright, always concerned with others. He was always very kind of me—used to stick up for me with Andre. No matter what has happened since, that’s how I’ll choose to remember him.”
If only the rest of the world would be so kind to his memory, I thought. She secured a promise to get together again soon and left.
“HOW WILL YOU recognize them?” Rachel asked as we waited outside of the county morgue.
“I don’t think I’ll have much trouble figuring out who they are,” I replied, twisting a tissue to shreds. “Won’t be too many people coming down here this late.”
Rachel had insisted on keeping her promise to Frank to keep an eye on me, and wouldn’t let me meander through town on my own. She asked me to page Frank to let him know where we would be. This set off an electronic chain reaction: Frank called back, called the morgue, and then paged Reed Collins, who then asked the coroner’s office to page him when the Monroes arrived.
As it turned out, we needed Frank’s help anyway. Even though the morgue is open twenty-four hours a day for receiving bodies, the normal “viewing” hours were 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. If Frank hadn’t pulled some strings, I would have been the one to tell the Monroes they’d made the drive for nothing. I’m sure that would have gone over big with Lucas’s brother.
We were almost twenty minutes early. I decided to wait outside; a vain attempt to not think about what went on inside of the building.
I looked up to see a woman quietly and resolutely making her way toward us on a younger man’s arm. She was a fine-looking woman, a woman who took care with her appearance without becoming a lacquered mannequin. Not afraid of a few wrinkles or the gray in her short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Something both old-fashioned and yet lively about her.
When the man walked into the light as they drew nearer, I felt a moment of unsettling recognition. Had Lucas Monroe never lived on the streets, I thought, he would look very much like the man standing before me. I quickly amended the thought—had he stayed off the streets and grown to hate me, he would look like this man.
The woman looked at me, then glanced at Rachel, but quickly let her gaze come back to me. “You’re more upset than this other one,” she said. “I think you must be Irene.”
CHARLES LOST THE VERY BRIEF argument that would have allowed me to wait with Rachel while they went in to see the body. I wish he had won.
I do not ever again want to be in the county morgue, not unless I am dead. I do not want to stand at the side of a mother who must say of a video image of a body pulled out of a drawer, “Yes, that’s my son.” June Monroe did not carry on loudly, did not sob or wail. She swayed a little, and so ferociously bit the hand that flew to her mouth in a balled fist, that she drew blood from it. Charles folded her to him, setting aside the glare to make a silent request. I acknowledged it and excused myself. Reed followed me out of the room, and asked me to wait for the Monroes in a small conference room across the hall. He kept the door open, and watched for June and Charles Monroe. I spent some time dodging his questions about how I had located Lucas’s mother. He wasn’t very happy with me.
After a while the Monroes came out into the hallway. Reed asked her a few questions about when she had last seen Lucas. She told him that he had come to Riverside a little over two weeks ago for a brief visit. It was the first time she had seen Lucas in several years.
Reed carefully worked his way toward asking, “What did he talk about on that visit?”
She caught him at it anyway. “Nothing that would concern the police,” she said, then seemed to change her mind. “He as
ked my forgiveness and he got it. He had it before he arrived.”
“Just working his twelve steps, that’s all,” Charles said.
“My son Charles thinks that the fact that his brother went to AA somehow made that apology less sincere. I don’t. Lucas wanted and received my forgiveness.” She folded her arms across her chest in a gesture that said that would be that.
“When was the last time you saw your brother?” Reed asked Charles.
Charles didn’t answer.
“He hasn’t seen his brother since Christmas,” June said, ignoring Charles’s glare. “Charles came down to Las Piernas every year, as a favor to me.” She paused, then added, “Not to speak to Lucas, just to let me know if he was still alive.”
“Guess I ought to be grateful,” Charles said. “Lucas has gone and saved me from making that trip again.”
I saw June Monroe stiffen in her chair. She pursed her lips together, as though to hold back a retort. She pointedly turned her back to Charles and began to ask questions of Reed Collins. Her son was a young man, too young to have a heart attack. What did the police know about his death?
Reed was straightforward in his answers, if not detailed. He told her that although Lucas’s college ring was missing, so far there was no evidence that he had died anything other than a natural death. He told her again that tests were being done just to make sure. I wondered if all of this was going right past her; she seemed numb. But she merely thanked Reed and then drew a breath and asked for time alone with me. After protests from Charles, they left us alone in the small conference room.
“Mrs. Monroe,” I began, but she waved my sympathy aside before I could offer it.
“Nothing can hurt him now. I have faith, Irene Kelly. Faith. My faith sustains me. I know my son was a good man, a good, good man. I know the Lord will take care of him. Charles, he doesn’t believe. He tells me he lost his faith in Vietnam, but I don’t know if that’s so. This will be much harder for him, I’m afraid.” She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing another deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she gave me a look that was so no-nonsense, she could have X-rayed me with it.