“I’m so glad you came in first.” Mom grabbed the comb and tried to sit up, but she cringed with the effort and flopped back down. Laura took the comb from her and worked on her hair.
“He’s a cop, Mom. He’s seen people at their worst.”
“Ow! Do you have to pull it?”
“Ruby’s on her way.”
“She didn’t have to go through the trouble.”
“You can tell her that when she gets here. Do you like this clip?” Laura held up a rhinestone-and-feather thing from her bag. It was leftover from some event where she’d taken her hair down after the cocktail hour, and the clip had gotten moved in the bag transfer.
“It’s a little garish for the hospital.”
Laura found a tube of concealer and used it on her mother’s dark circles. “Last night, I had this dream, or memory maybe, about swallowing a pin. Dad pulled it out. Did that happen?”
“Yes. You were very cute with pretending you were a seamstress. Not pretending anymore, I guess.”
“Don’t even get me started.” Laura perfected the concealer and fussed with a powder brush on Mom’s cheeks. “I’m so far from what I wanted to be doing right now. Except working with Jeremy, which I do want, and I love more than anything. Otherwise, it’s all pushing paper and making decisions and telling other people how to do what I could do better. I don’t think I’m happy, but then I think I should give it more time. I don’t know.” She gave Mom one last rub at the corner of her eye. “There. Magnificent. You look like a bypass is ten years away, at least.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, I’m going to send Jimmy in and go make some calls. Then I’m going to figure out what to do about the dress and the princess and Dad, because it’s eating at me.”
“Don’t blame him for this.” Mom indicated the bed with a sweep of her hand.
Laura kissed Mom on the cheek and went out to send Jimmy in to see her newly beautified mother.
**
The waiting room was done in the most generic shades of blue and grey. Laura found herself annoyed and impatient with the worn places on the cushions and the pattern on the carpet. All the seats were taken, except ones next to someone. She sat on a low, magazine-strewn table, facing the window. She wanted to be alone. So she closed off a part of her mind where she existed with only the phone’s ring in her ear.
“Hello?” Jeremy had been sleeping. It was one in the morning the next day in China. She nearly broke down in tears hearing his voice, and he made it worse by speaking again. “Laura?”
“Mom’s in the hospital. The doctor said she has to have a bypass tomorrow, so I don’t think I’ll be coming into work. I’m sorry. I’ll try to answer my emails from here.”
“Whoa, there. Slow down.” His voice slipped, and he coughed. “Hang on.” He coughed for a good fifteen seconds.
“I can call you back.”
“No. Shut up. I’m fine. I can try to get out of Guangzhou, but I may have to go through Hong Kong.”
“What? No. Wendy can handle the office. I’ll be on email.”
He coughed again. That happened whenever he woke up, no matter what time, and she was forced to take it easy for that minute and just wait.
“You okay?” she finally asked.
“Wendy?” he asked.
“Oh, God, you’re right.”
“Don’t freak out. Please. I can be back in two days. I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do.”
“And I’m telling you, you don’t have to come back. I’ll be in the office on Tuesday morning at the latest.”
“Have you lost your mind? I’m not coming back for work. I’m coming back for you.”
She found it hard to speak after that, and the long silences she’d sat through for him were reciprocated as she tried not to sniff or snort too loudly into the phone. “I’m so worried,” she said between sobs. “It’s Dad. I can’t even... it’s too long to tell now. If she dies, I will kill him.” The last word came out as a non-threatening squeak.
“She’s not going to die.”
“Unless she does.”
“Laura?”
“Jeremy.”
“I need to call the airline and get a flight out. Can I call you back?”
“Say you love me,” she said.
“You love me.”
“You love me, too.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Hurry home.”
**
Jimmy came out as she was hanging up the phone, jingling his keys and looking focused.
“Where are you going?” Laura asked, as if he were obligated to tell her.
“Picking up some things from the house. Slippers, whatever.” He clutched a slip of paper, looking a little upset, a little paler, and discombobulated. She found that weird for a police officer who had probably been bled on multiple times.
Laura held out her hand for the paper slip. “I’ll go. You sit.” He didn’t give her the list. “Here’s the thing. Mom thinks if she asks me to go get the stuff, she’s bothering me, and she’d rather bother you. But I bet she doesn’t want you in her drawers. As a matter of fact, I bet she’s going to be really uncomfortable knowing you’re picking up her underwear. So…” She wiggled her fingers, and he placed the paper in it.
**
She was grateful to get out of the hospital and do something useful. She’d never been good at sitting still, and she could tell the thing with Mom was really going to test every bit of her endurance.
Packing Mom’s warm slippers and socks, poking in her closets to find a comfortable nightgown and some piece of memorabilia to comfort her in strange surroundings, Laura came upon the photo album again. She opened it. Dad. Dad everywhere. She tried to memorize his face but only saw Ruby, until she looked so closely that his face fell apart in a spill of grainy dots. Even when she looked for Barnabas in his natty suits and side-parted hair, her eyes gravitated to her father’s face, his slim form, and his soft-looking hair. She studied his visage for some kind of connection but found none.
Her phone rang.
“Hi, Barry.”
“Am I taking you out tonight again? There’s a club on 25th Street I guarantee you haven’t been to.”
“My mom’s going into surgery in the morning.”
“Sorry to hear,” he said.
“Hey, um, can I have the name of the transportation company you used for the dress?”
“Oh my God, what a nightmare. That crazy bitch insisted on them. Hang on.” She heard the rustle of the phone and some clacking noises. “Laranja Transport.” He spelled it, gave her the number, then said, “You pronounce the J like an H.”
“Thanks. Do you know what language that is? Sounds like Spanish.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I gave the name to the cops, too. So you’re going to be asking the same questions.”
“Probably. Thanks, Barry. I know you’re waiting to hear from me on the other thing.”
“You must have heard. We’re releasing an IPO. So executive positions staffed? Kind of important. Take a few days, all right? Then I have to sign someone I like a hell of a lot less.”
“I will.” She knew she should have just told him no. She should have said she only ever wanted to work with Jeremy and that it had been that way since the interview, when they’d hunched over a sewing machine working on a shirt shell he would throw away. She should have said that having her lover and her partner in the same person was great for her, that it made her life into a sealed sphere that was pleasant and comfortable. But she couldn’t say any of those things. Her mouth wouldn’t make the words. Why did she betray Jeremy with her silences? Was she no better than every other backstabbing garmento bitch? Or was she just going to stay with him and wake up in twenty years, wondering if she was ever going to be her best self?
As she packed Mom’s things, she thought, twenty really was a nice, round number, wasn’t it? Like a prison sentence.
**
On the way to
the hospital, she looked up the address for Laranja Transport because as much as she had to get to Mom right away, she felt like a burden in that tiny, closed little room. She recognized the address as the Stock Hotel on the west side. The Stock had only a Jimmy Choo, a Barnes and Noble, and a Rumpin’s Brewery on the ground floor. She called the number and got an automated answer requesting she leave a message after the tone, which she did. But she was sure she’d never hear from them.
When she got up to the room, Mom was watching the news.
Laura dropped the bag and took the last available chair to stare at the screen. “Where’s Jimmy?” she asked, hoping the guy had taken half a break from hanging on Mom.
“Went to get something to eat.” She pointed at her tray of plastic-wrapped dinner.
Laura inspected it. “Who cooks this? Sadists?”
Mom turned up the television. “Look.”
Princess Philomena was dancing with her husband, and the announcer was gleefully reporting in voiceover that the high prince of Brunico had arrived at LaGuardia airport that very morning to reopen trade relations with the United States. But whenever old video of the princess was on the screen, the announcer became completely irrelevant, because who could focus on some garbage about trade relations when that radiant, stunning creature floated across the screen? Her proportions and movements exemplified the golden mean in that they were most pleasing to the mind and heart. Her smile revealed a core honesty and truth, that she held back nothing, and was simply smiling with her whole spirit, because she was fully present in her moment of pleasure. What must she have been like? The experience of her must have been soothing and precious.
“She was something, wasn’t she?” Mom said.
“You’d know.
“She was something.”
The Brunican Fortnight Coup was taught in college, if you took a required humanities in design school and the teacher desperately wanted to find connection points with her students, to wit, Princess Philomena, socialite and overall fashion plate. The coup was not considered a turning point in world history but a curiosity for the sheer petty bloodlessness of it and the chilling effect it had on peat moss exports.
But its effect on the gossip columns was immeasurable. Socialites and politicians had been gathered like cattle on the third day of inaugural celebrations and put on boats. Their luggage had been thrown in behind them, much of it to follow via post, in a forced exodus of spilled wine, broken heels, and busted egos. Montego Bundy, a banker, straight-backed on his own personal dinghy, had found a willing and powerful rower in actor Roberto Thorpe. The friendship that developed on the way to Argentina blossomed into a famous moviemaking partnership. The same could not be said for the hundred people in evening finery stuffed onto the sixty-man ferry. The elbows and bruised feet of the journey gave birth to the famous animosity between Yezall Lapidus and Grace Cert that eventually resulted in a stolen husband, two children tossed unceremoniously from Whitehall Boarding School, and a still-disputed hit-and-run involving a Jaguar.
As a result of enough moaning and complaining from the upper crust, the United States and Brunico had cut off all trade ties, an action that affected exactly no one except the same social strata that stood to gain the most from supplying luxury goods to the black market. That all made for an amusing couple of required credits, but the real story wasn’t told outside Brunico. There were suppositions. For instance, some thought the princess had attempted to kill her husband in an effort to trigger the Brunican Proviso, which dictated that if the first male of the family died unwed or childless, and there were no other males to take his place, a woman could serve as monarch until the twelfth birthday of the next male heir. There was no stipulation for a female leader when another male existed almost anywhere in the family.
But facts were scant. The island was reported as closed for two weeks, earning the Fortnight Coup its name, and apologies were sent with refunds for any reservations. The princess stopped appearing in public, but members of the political and financial elite reported that she was alive and well, because though the island never officially opened again, the shadiest businesses still operated year-round.
And that dress had somehow left the island because Barnabas Chard wanted to… what? Protect her legacy? Protect his own? Who was that guy besides a slick financier who had left it all behind to live on a rock?
In Mom’s hospital room, the TV switched to present day clarity. High Prince Salvadore was being interviewed about his trip to the UN. He was only visible in profile. His voice was heavily accented, though she couldn’t place the original language.
“What do they speak over there?” she asked Mom.
“Portuguese and English.”
Salvadore disappeared, and some drunken celebrity took his place. Laura was left with her impressions of him, which were not all that positive. He seemed coarse and gruff. She had no idea what a woman like the princess would see in a guy like that, nor could she see what the high prince could be coming to New York for, unless called by a missing orange gown.
CHAPTER 11
Sunday morning. Emails answered. Three hours of sleep managed. Bypass Day. “This is easy. Everyone does it. First-year med school stuff. Yes, it isn’t a double but a triple, which is annoying, but better safe than sorry. Don’t want surgery again. Would you like something for the stress, Ms. Carnegie? You look upset?”
No, she didn’t want anything for the stress. Ruby was in the air, and Jeremy was somewhere in China. Jimmy was around, then not around. Then he was back with coffee, which she took.
“You don’t have to hang around,” she said. “I’m here.”
He sat next to her on her magazine-strewn table. “I’m good.”
“You don’t have to feel obligated.”
He smirked and rolled the cup between his palms. She thought he was the type to pull out a crowbar at the slightest provocation, but he didn’t seem angry.
“Your mother told me about you, with the, uh… poking around bodies. She’s proud of you, you know. But honestly, I’m not seeing it. You don’t pay attention, just from what I can tell is all.” His elbows rested on his knees, and he was looking at her pointedly. He had shaved and trimmed the moustache, which was about thirty percent salt to seventy pepper. He had all his hair, though it was getting grey, as well.
“I have things on my mind.”
“You have to pay attention even when your mind is somewhere else. See, from what I get, you make the connections real good, but it’s all in the head. You need more outward.” He pointed two fingers away from his eyes.
“You’re telling me if I was paying attention, I would have noticed that you’ve been with my mother in some capacity for how long?”
“You tell me.”
She breathed. He was irritating. She wanted to jump out of her skin, not relive the past year.
“Come on,” he said. “We got nothing else to do here. And you’re a lousy detective. You’ve got the instincts but not the method.”
Laura tilted her head, stretching her neck right, then left, eyes closed. “Toward the end of the Thomasina thing, when the cops finally let Ruby back into her apartment, she was scrubbing the countertop and telling me that you promised her a new one, and I thought, how could she have spoken to you in the last eight hours? It’s morning. She talked to Mom, who must have talked to you. At night? That was three months ago.”
“Longer.”
Laura reached back because she had nothing else to do, and he was right: She was a pretty lousy detective. “The day the washer broke, soon after we moved in. Mom fixed it.”
“Yeah?”
“She had a wrench I’d never seen before. It clicked when it turned.” She moved her hand to imitate the motion. “And I never saw it again. Even when we took the floor out of the closet.”
“When you what?”
Her phone dinged, and she rooted around in her bag for it. “Not paying much attention, are you?” Jeremy’s name showed up on her screen. Sh
e excused herself, leaving Jimmy to wonder which floor they’d removed.
“Hey,” she said.
“Monday, midday,” Jeremy said. “I’ll come straight from the airport.”
“She’s going into surgery today.”
“Hold it together. You know they all depend on you.”
“No pressure.”
“For you? Nah.”
They hung up. Monday afternoon. She could make it until then. Piece of cake.
**
Laura got angry when she hung up and looked back around at the soothingly irritating, meaningless pastel prints on the walls. Generic. Everything generic. What an awful place to be in. She didn’t know how she got mad, but she went from teary and bleary to stinking, rat-ass pissed. She was mad on behalf of Mom, who had finally moved out of the apartment she’d been married in, whose daughters were grown, who had actually started dating someone, only to find out all the stories she’d told herself and been told had been wrong, and the guilt and hurt she’d let go of had been the wrong guilt and hurt, and she had to start over again.
She was mad at Brunico. Mad at the princess. Mad at Soso. Mostly, however, she was mad at Dad. Madder than she’d ever been, and she had spent most of her life harboring a seething rage at her father. So the growing anger pushed at the edges of what she thought she was capable of feeling and infested her every thought and desire. She wanted to find a way to hurt him. But first, she had to have her hands on him. He had to be physically present. Then she was going to twist his head off like a screw cap on a bottle.
She had to stop thinking about Dad. He clouded every thought, making her ineffective. She wasn’t going to be any use to her mother if he used up all of her brain cells. She had to let it go, let the cops, the insurance company, and the gears of the machine of the world do their work.
**
Cangemi’s desk was back, but he’d perched the Barbie doll on top of a picture frame. He also had a new lampshade fringed with OB tampons.
“Lotta creative energy in this room,” Laura said.
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