“Oh, shit.” The truth finally penetrated, dismaying me with its implications and startling me into profanity. “It’s the park. This woman is waiting for me in the goddamned park. Damn you, Marsha Sandy. Oh, Christ.”
16
You might think there wouldn’t be many people in a park on a day like that, but that would only show how much time you spend indoors in the winter.
I passed kids on sleds, a couple of joggers—good grief—a pair of lovers huddling under a single parka, at least one mother with a stroller, and a few people who seemed to be hustling across the park on their way to somewhere else, somewhere warmer and dryer, no doubt.
I didn’t think any of these people were Ms. Mclnerny.
But diagonally across the park from where I entered it, a person who appeared to be female sat alone at the end of a bench under a dead walnut tree.
Christ, I thought again.
The reason I was so blasphemously upset was that I knew what this meant: it meant she didn’t have any place else to go; it meant she spent her days, even her coldest days, in this park, and maybe even her nights, as well. It meant she was one sick lady, living one miserable life. It made me angry, it made me sad, it made me hurry toward her.
I hugged the white paper sack to the chest of my coat. God, it was cold. I was grateful that although I didn’t have on slacks, at least the hem of my skirt met the tops of my boots. I was grateful for the cashmere beret that I’d pulled down over my ears, for the extra pair of socks I’d slipped on that morning over my hose, for my lined Isotoner gloves. As I walked toward the woman on the bench, I found myself counting a lot of blessings.
When I reached the bench, I stopped a few feet away and said, “Excuse me. Are you Ms. Mclnerny?”
She had been studying her mittened hands in her lap, but now she looked up at me. She was a large woman, constructed in circles, like a snowman. Her body was lumpy with overweight and with all the layers of clothing she wore. She was probably in her late thirties, early forties, but her face was unlined. That might have been because the fat beneath the skin smoothed it out, but there was also a dull, passive appearance to it. I’d seen that unnaturally youthful skin before, on women my age and older at the psychiatric hospital where my mother lived. Those women didn’t have laugh lines because they rarely laughed; they didn’t have frown lines because they were drugged out of their anger. Like this woman, their faces had a hangdog appearance, as if their muscles lacked tone, as if they lacked the ambition to lift those muscles into conversation or expression. She wore no makeup, though her cheeks were chapped red as rouge; she had short, frizzy, light brown hair that escaped in untidy wisps from beneath her cap. The cap was pink, with earflaps that were tied under her fatty chin by a string. It was like meeting in the flesh the woman I had earlier imagined myself to be. What cheek, I thought: How could I, healthy, wealthy, and sane, even pretend to know what life was like for her?
I observed all that during the time it took for my question to register. She nodded. I introduced myself. After nearly as long a pause, she nodded again.
I gestured toward the empty end of the bench.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
She stared where I had pointed, again seemed to have to register the question, nodded. I wiped as much snow off the bench with my gloves as I could, although some of it stuck in icy clumps to the metal. Sighing to myself, I sat down, my white bag crackling.
“I brought lunch,” I said. “Will you join me?”
During the pause before she nodded, I reached into the sack and started bringing out the various containers and placing them in the snow on the bench between us.
Her lips came apart slowly, as if they were cold and stiff, or as if she hadn’t used them to talk in a long time. In a soft, slow, toneless voice, she asked, “What is it anyway?”
“These are crab salad,” I said, pointing at the sandwiches. “That’s cole slaw. Potato chips. Coffee. Forks. Napkins. There’s plenty for both of us. Please help yourself.”
Slowly, carefully, she lifted one of the sandwiches and folded back the brown waxed-paper wrapping. She gazed at it for a few moments before she tried it. After a few bites, during which mayonnaise accumulated around her lips, she said, “It’s good.” After a few more bites, she said, “Thanks a lot.”
“I should have brought chili,” I said.
She slowly circled her mouth with her tongue, getting most of the mayonnaise off.
“Do you come here a lot, Ms. Mclnerny?”
She nodded. The food seemed to speed up her reaction time, or maybe it just warmed her chilled brain.
“But it’s so cold,” I said.
She stopped chewing, swallowed, and said in a slow monotone, “It’s not so bad today. It’ll be real cold in a while.” There was a long pause before she added, “I won’t be able to come here much longer.” Long pause. “It’ll be too cold.”
“What will you do then?”
She shrugged, a slow rising and falling of her many-layered shoulders. Under a huge brown quilted coat she seemed to be wearing at least two sweaters, a skirt and slacks. On her feet were huge rubber boots lined with dirty white fuzz. She didn’t look like a bag lady, however, or even particularly poor, just slightly eccentric. Actually, I should have appeared the more eccentric one, wearing only my coat and a thin wool dress to this snowy picnic in the park.
“Stay in my room,” she answered.
“Do you live near here?”
“Not too far.” For the first time since I’d arrived, she looked up at me. Her eyes were an unpretty blue; her expression was blankly serious. “I don’t mind the snow. But I hate it when it rains. I get so wet.” She cocked her head. “Do you like the rain?”
“From the inside,” I said, “looking out.”
She thought that over, nodded, then suddenly smiled.
We finished our lunches in near-silence, but it was companionable now. I didn’t want to press her, but I wanted to know more about her. Evidently, she wanted to know at least a little about me, too, because she said, “I sure thank you for lunch. What’s your name again?”
“Jenny. Jenny Cain.”
“Do you know Dr. Sandy?”
I nodded. “We’re old friends.”
“I think she’s wonderful. My name’s Rosalinda.”
“I know. It’s beautiful.”
“I play the guitar.”
“That’s wonderful.”
She nodded her head. “Yes. I’m supposed to play it every day. Dr. Sandy says it will make me feel better, so I won’t be so depressed all the time. But I don’t like playing it just by myself. I like to play for other people.”
Ah, I thought: there’s my opening.
“Rosalinda, if there was a place … a nice, warm, friendly place … where you could go during the day … and be with other people who’ve been sick, like you … and talk to them if you want to … or play your guitar if you want to … would you go there?”
She frowned in puzzlement. “A hospital, you mean?”
“No, a recreation hall, a place especially for people who have been sick like you have, a place for people who would like to have some place nice to spend some of their time.”
“That sounds nice,” she said, wistfully.
“Rosalinda, would you go?”
“Go?”
“To a recreation hall like that?”
“How would I get there?”
“By bus, maybe.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how.”
“They’d show you.”
“I can’t afford to take the bus.”
“They’d help you afford it.”
“Who?”
“The staff at the recreation hall.”
“They wouldn’t let me take my guitar on the bus.”
“Yes, Rosalinda, they would. Believe me. They would.”
“I wouldn’t know anybody.”
“You’d make friends.”
“They wouldn’t like me.”
“I think they would. Very much.”
She glanced slowly at me, then away.
“Rosalinda, would you try it?”
She shrugged her slow shrug. “I don’t know.”
I decided that was all I could expect. Why, after all, should she commit herself to something she’d never seen or ever heard about before? For the first time, I realized that if we opened a recreation hall, it would have to prove itself to the clients, as well as to the neighbors. We couldn’t take anything about it for granted. She seemed relieved when I dropped the subject.
Rosalinda helped me to gather our trash and to stuff it back into the paper sack. I was aware that she watched me as I carried it all to a trash can and dumped it in. When I returned to stand near her, her pudgy fingers were lying in her lap again.
I said, “Thank you for sharing my lunch.”
“I am happy to meet you,” she replied, with great seriousness. Snow was starting to fall again; small flakes dotted her pink cap, her dark, quilted shoulders, the tops of her mittens and boots. “I think you’re the prettiest person that’s ever spoken to me in my whole life.”
“Thank you.” I had to wait a minute before I could speak again. I cleared my throat. “Could I give you a ride back to your room?”
She shook her head.
“Well, good-bye, Rosalinda.”
She nodded. “Good-bye, Jenny Friend.”
I must have looked puzzled, or something.
“That’s what I call people who are nice to me,” she explained, her eyes looking straight into mine. I had been wondering if she might be slightly retarded, or if this simpleness was an effect of illness, or drugs. “I have a Mama Friend and a Papa Friend. And Doctor Sandy Friend. I have a Christopher Friend and a Case Worker Friend. Now I have a Jenny Friend. Even if I don’t ever see you again, you’ll always be my Jenny Friend. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” I murmured over the conch shell in my throat. After offering another awkward good-bye, I turned away and walked quickly back to the car.
You win, Marsha, I thought. I’ll try.
17
I was so cold by that time that the interior of Faye’s Volvo seemed warm by comparison. Slipping into it, I was reminded that before I did anything else I had a promise to keep to her. But I was suddenly so tired that it seemed a great and unnecessary effort to make. Derek was a grown man; surely he didn’t need Faye to mother him or me to chase him. I crossed my gloved hands on top of the steering wheel, rested my head on them, and closed my eyes to the sight of the snow falling on the hood of the car.
Damn, what a day. I felt as if I’d taken uppers and downers simultaneously—the uppers shouted “Go for it,” while the downers mumbled, “Sleep.” I promised my complaining body that I would defrost it and park it after I had completed this errand. Remember how lucky you are, I said to myself. Drive, I said to myself.
I parked on the street in front of the condo complex where Derek lived. I was going to have to get out of that car—just as it was finally getting warm again. I could easily have killed him for causing this noble sacrifice on my part.
Derek’s building was at the far end of the empty, covered swimming pool in the center of the complex. I walked into the little vestibule, found his mailbox, with letters inside, and rang the ivory button underneath it. Without waiting for a response, I climbed up to his unit on the second floor and rapped on his door. My fingers were so cold it felt as if I’d knocked with the bare bones of my finger joints. Not only was there no response from his apartment but the whole building seemed soundless, motionless.
After knocking several more times, although I didn’t really think he was there, I walked around to the back of the building to check the parking lot. No red Toyota.
Well, at least I could tell Faye I had tried.
Now I wanted to return to the office to make a couple of phone calls that were beginning to seem more urgent to me as activity warmed my blood and melted the ice around my brain.
While making the first call, I took off my left shoe and sat on that foot to warm it.
“Nordic Realty.”
“Hi, Michael. It’s Jenny. What’s the matter? Can’t you guys afford a secretary yet? Maybe you’d better not be putting down payments on buildings if you can’t even come up with enough money to pay minimum wage to a receptionist.”
“Hi, Swede. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you recognize equality when you hear it? Unlike some executives I could name, I believe in answering my own phone.”
I laughed, and felt a rush of remembered fondness for him.
“Speaking of Faye, she says you called.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I called to gloat.”
I feigned innocence. “Really? Why’s that, Michael?”
“‘Why’s that, Michael?’” he said mockingly. “Nice try, Jenny, but you don’t convince me. I’m sorry you lost the building for the reason you did, but as tasteless as it may seem, we’re celebrating around here. I’ll tell you what, though, I was serious about that offer to help you find another site….”
I sat up straighter in my chair. “Celebrating what?”
He laughed, and mocked me again. “‘Celebrating what, Michael?’”
“I’m serious. You shouldn’t be celebrating anything yet, because you haven’t got it yet—”
“That’s not what the landlord said to me when I called him this morning. What the landlord said was, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Laurence, you just made yourself a hell of a deal—’ ”
“I’ll call you back,” I said, and hung up.
I found George Butts’s office phone number among the notes I had taken during our original interview with MaryDell Paine. While I punched in the number and waited, I put my left shoe back on, shook off the right one, and sat on that foot. It was still cold enough to send a chill through the layers of skirt, slip, stockings, and panties.
A woman with a sweet, older-sounding voice answered:
“Triple A Management.” It was typical of what I had perceived in the old rascal, I thought, to pick a company name whose only relevant purpose was to place him first in the Yellow Pages: AAA Management.
“George Butts, please.”
“May I inquire as to who’s calling?”
“Ms. Cain, from the Port Frederick Civic Foundation.”
“Thank you. Will you hold?”
“Yes.”
She was making the enterprise sound like a multifloored monolith, when the reality probably was that she was his wife, taking messages for him at home. The next sound I heard was music from a local radio station. I pictured the phone receiver, lying on its side, placed against a radio speaker. The music hadn’t even gone through one syrupy chorus of “Mandy” when she returned, speaking in dulcet tones of regret.
“I’m so sorry, but Mr. Butts isn’t in right now.”
“Is this Mrs. Butts?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Would you take a message for him?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Tell George that if he doesn’t come to the phone immediately, I will haul him into court for breach of contract. Remind him that the courts consider verbal contracts to be as binding as written ones and that I have a witness.”
“Uh, hold on, please.”
Same radio song, different chorus.
The next voice I heard was George Butts’s, sounding jovial.
“What’s this about breach of contract?”
“You gave us until Friday,” I said.
“Well, yes, I did,” he admitted. “But I figured you folks wouldn’t want the old place anymore, not after what happened there last night, not what with the neighbors being so upset and all. Mind you, like I said the other day, don’t make me no difference who gets the old place, could be you folks, could be them other guys, but like I said they got the money in their hands, and all you folks got now is problems, am
I right?”
“I’m good at solving problems, George.”
He chuckled. “Well, now, you know, I think I’d like to see you solve this one. In fact, maybe you and me ought to get together at the church tonight and see if we can’t solve some of our problems.”
“I think we can manage this over the phone, George.”
You old lecher, I thought, and with your wife right there in the house, too.
“Tell you what, then,” he said. “I’m a fair man. If I said you could have until Friday, then, by God, I’ll give you until Friday morning—”
“Noon, George. You said noon.”
“Right, noon. But by twelve-oh-one this Friday afternoon, I’m going to be takin’ somebody’s check.”
“You’re all heart, George.”
“I kinda hope you win,” he said, and chuckled again. “It’d be a pleasure doin’ business with you. You’re smart. And, besides, you’re prettier than that real estate fella.”
Still chuckling, old George hung up.
Actually, it was debatable whether I was prettier than Michael Laurence. I called him back at the realty office, and once again, he answered the phone.
“It’s not over ‘til the fat man sings,” I said.
“What are you talking about, Jenny?”
“The other day, George Butts promised me that we’d have until Friday to make an offer on his basement, Michael. I just phoned him to remind him of that fact. He’s still willing to wait until then, so I would advise you not to count your apartment building until the foundation’s laid.”
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