“Can you pick up ‘Coming Events’ for the time being?” he asked Theresa.
“Sure.” “Coming Events” was a royal pain in the butt. You left out some meeting of Gardeners’ Anonymous, and you’d never hear the end of it. Grady would owe her big-time when he got back.
“Thanks,” said Witt. “And-”
“And?”
“‘From the Police Blotter.’”
“From the Police Blotter” was a list, printed on page two, of everyone who’d been arrested since the previous issue. You got to read their names, their ages, their home addresses, and what they’d been charged with. Critics assailed it as nothing but gossip, invasion of privacy, and slander. Defenders (Neil Witt among them) countered with claims of free speech, the community’s right to know, and the fact that such details were a matter of public record, anyway. Tom Grady, who regularly compiled the list, was a natural for the task. He was a police buff, a cop wannabe who drank with most of the officers and all of the chiefs in the area. They knew to phone him as soon as a new arrest came across their desks; each one was worth a drink or a pack of smokes, not to mention the added ego gratification of seeing their own names in print.
“How’m I supposed to do that?” Theresa asked.
“I’ve got Tom’s phone book,” Witt explained. The way he said it, it sounded to Theresa like Grady voluntarily surrendered it each time he was about to fall off the wagon. “All you’ll have to do is make some calls. Okay?”
“Great,” said Theresa, heading for her desk before her boss could come up with yet some other assignment for her.
Tom Grady would owe her huge.
Back downstairs in the kitchen, Stephen Barrow sat at the wooden table, a flea-market purchase, $12, bargained down from $20. A lot of sanding and a little shoe polish had transformed it from a piece of trash to - well, a piece of furniture. Sure, there’d been those first couple of weeks when everything had a slight taste of cordovan to it, but they’d gotten past that.
The two mismatched chairs he’d found antiquing, over in Great Barrington. Penny had needed a booster seat at first, but she had put it away a long time ago, announcing one evening, “I growed up, Stephen.” Her little chin resting on the tabletop, she continued to deadpan even as Stephen laughed out loud. It must have been a struggle for her to eat like that, but she stayed with it. On the bright side, a noticeably greater percentage of her food got inadvertently trapped by her mouth, instead of completing its inexorable journey to the floor, than had previously been the case.
He toyed with the idea of doing an hour of writing. He was maybe seventy pages into a new manuscript, a story about a miracle diet drug that turns out to be so effective its users can’t stop losing weight, even after they’ve stopped taking it. He wasn’t sure about the whole idea. There were times when he thought it could be the next big disaster book, soon to become a major motion picture. There were other times when he felt like he was selling out, writing a script for some made-for-TV summer-schedule filler.
He’d had four novels published over a span of six years - not too shabby a track record for someone who’d been at it for such a short time. But in those same six years, there’d been four other books that hadn’t made it, that at this very moment existed only as boxed manuscripts stacked in his closet as though in a mausoleum, waiting there in suspended animation for some prince of a publisher to awaken them with a kiss or, even better, a contract.
On top of his uncertainty about the out-of-control-diet-drug idea, there was another problem. He was at the end of a chapter - chapter two, to be precise, where the pretty young research assistant discovers that her laboratory mice are losing weight - and he had no clue how to begin chapter three. So he found himself stuck with a minor case of writer’s block.
He’d once read something Ernest Hemingway had said, or supposedly said. Always stop writing in the middle of a sentence, or at some other place where you know exactly what’s supposed to come next. That way you’ll never have any trouble picking up where you left off.
He should have listened.
Then again, who was to say? Maybe Hemingway forgot to follow his own advice at the end.
He decided against bringing his manuscript up on the computer, in favor of spending a few minutes straightening up the kitchen. He put away the dishes that had been in the drying rack - they had a dishwasher, but seldom used it - filled and set the coffee machine so it would be ready to turn on in the morning, and looked through a small pile of papers on the counter. There were some unpaid bills, a letter from his editor, a few notes he’d written to himself, a newspaper item or two he’d clipped out for future reference, and a square red envelope he didn’t recognize. Looking inside, he found a sheet of lined paper that had been folded over twice, until it roughly resembled the shape and size of a greeting card. With no less certainty than a mother seal identifying her pup by its scent, he recognized his daughter’s artwork. On the front was the figure of a person, probably male, wearing what could have been a coat or a bathrobe or a cape of some sort. It was carefully crayoned in red (or perhaps magenta or vermillion or one of those other exotic shades that seem to exist only in the world according to Crayola), except that on the figure’s chest was printed a large letter D in bright blue. He opened it to the centerfold. Right away he could see that she’d gotten some help with the spelling (though apparently not too much), but the sentiment was clearly hers.
HAPPY VALENTIMES DAY, DADDYMAN.
I LOVE YOU.
PENNY
He sat there and smiled for a very long time, before finally folding the card back up and returning it to its envelope. Then he checked his watch. It was a calendar watch, sort of: It had a little box with a number in it, which told you the date, so long as you remembered to advance it manually following any month that had fewer than thirty-one days. As far as what month it actually was - or what year or day of the week, for that matter - you were left to figure that out for yourself. Right now the number in the little box was ten. Four days (really three, now that today was all but over) till Valentine’s Day. Or Valentimes Day, if you were six. Once again Penny had come to the rescue and reminded him of something, if only inadvertently.
He made a mental note to go to the Drug Mart in South Chatham the following day so that he could buy her a card of his own, and perhaps a little present of some sort. He’d mail her the card: She absolutely loved getting her own mail. Then he locked the door, turned down the heat, flicked off the lights, and headed upstairs. He made a stop at Penny’s door, saw she’d fallen asleep with the book spread across her chest, the Wild Things dancing on its cover. He marveled that she didn’t get nightmares from them. As he tucked her in and kissed her softly on the forehead, she shook her head, but never quite opened her eyes.
“Am I safe?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep. Maybe she did get nightmares.
“Yes,” he told her. “You’re safe.”
And he realized in that moment that if he accomplished nothing else in his life, if he never made another nickel or got another book published as long as he lived, he could point to one unqualified success: He’d somehow managed to make things safe for his daughter.
It might not earn him a place in history, let alone pay the bills, but it certainly had to count for something.
Theresa Mulholland was a creature of habit, and even on four hours of sleep, she awoke promptly at 7:00. They’d put the paper to bed just after 1:00, bumping a story about a mountain lion sighting from page one in order to make room for the big item about the Columbia County Board of Assessors. Mountain lions were one thing, but real estate taxes - now there was news.
She remembered her new assignments, “Coming Events” and “From the Police Blotter,” but decided to try not to think about them, let alone do anything about them. She had three full days before she had to get her work in for the next issue; so there was no sense making calls yet, since things were bound to change before press time. Besides which, even thinking about
it made her pissed off at Tom Grady all over again.
Today was Friday. No deadline, no workout at the gym with Tony the Trainer. She knew she ought to get the oil changed on her Honda, but that was a pain. She’d have to wait at Jensen’s while they did it, and it was always cold in there and boring, unless your idea of a good time was reading back issues of Car and Driver, or looking at old pinup calendars from the ‘80s. She also needed to go food shopping - she was out of just about everything - but that meant driving over to Pittsfield, to the Stop-and-Shop and Guide’s. You went to the local Grand Union, and they never had what you wanted, no matter what it was.
She pulled the curtains back and looked outside. It had snowed overnight, sometime after she’d gotten home. Just a dusting, though; not enough to shovel. The winter had been pretty dealable so far: only two snowstorms that had amounted to anything, and a few subzero nights, but only a few. There’d been a good deal of talk about global warming, but Theresa never added her voice to those of the believers. She knew how quickly the temperature could drop in Columbia County, and she wasn’t about to jinx things.
She even thought about putting her skis on top of her car and heading over to Jiminy Peak, or down to Catamount. But it was Friday, and that meant the weekenders would already be beginning their invasion.
No, she’d take a shower, have some breakfast (though she was pretty much down to Fig Newtons and Rice-A-Roni), and then head over to the Drug Mart. She was out of toothpaste and dangerously low on tampons, and she’d been shaving her legs with the same disposable razor for two weeks now. Besides which, they had two whole aisles of food there. Good things like chips and salsa, M&M’s, marshmallows, cookies, crackers, and Cheez Whiz. All of the essential food groups invariably overlooked by the Department of Agriculture, but definitely on Satan’s recommended list.
Stephen and Penny Barrow shared a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The eggs had to be scrambled and well done; that was the only way Penny would eat them. With any other kind of eggs, the white was identifiable, whether yucky if fried, poached, or soft-boiled, or truly disgusting if hard-boiled. Then, while Stephen did the dishes, Penny got ready for school.
School was the Hillsdale Day Center, and a thirty-five-minute drive. But it was the best school in the area and, as far as Stephen was concerned, worth both the private tuition and the trip, which he made each morning and again each afternoon. Penny was good company in the car, keenly alert to sights along the way, and always ready to talk about stuff.
“So, Stephen,” she’d asked him out of the blue just last week, as they headed down the Taconic Parkway, “how’s the writing coming?”
His initial response at moments like that had been to laugh at how precocious she was, even as he’d dismiss the notion that she was really interested. But soon enough he came to realize she wasn’t just being cute or showing off - she really wanted to know how the writing was coming. So he began to tell her. And though he didn’t yet rank her up there with his literary agent or early draft readers, he knew better than to ignore her comments on his choice of names, occasional attempts at humor, and plot development. Just last week, for example, he’d run his out-of-control-diet-drug idea past her.
“Is it a pill?” she asked.
“Pill, capsule, whatever.” It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, at least as far as he was concerned.
“Why don’tcha make it a drink?” she suggested. “You know, like an Ultra Slim-Fast shake. They come in three delicious flavors. That would be much more realistic, don’tcha think?”
And he’d been forced to agree with her. The pill was transformed to a shake, and from there, to an herbal tea. And all of a sudden, his worries about how the lab would get FDA approval were eased. Not that it had done much to solve the rest of the problems of the book. But no doubt they’d eventually get around to discussing those, and she’d have some suggestions for them as well.
The drive back north was a different experience, to be sure, but Stephen enjoyed it, too. He seldom turned the radio on - his Jeep had no CD player, but he wouldn’t have played music even if it did. In his daughter’s absence, he simply preferred the silence, using it to think about his writing or something else, or often nothing at all. The upper stretches of the Taconic were beautiful - long, rolling hills with views of the Berkshires to the east and the Catskills to the west - and on this particular morning, the bright sunlight fairly dazzled on the fresh snow.
Right before the parkway ended, he exited onto Route 203 and turned left, toward South Chatham. He slowed down dutifully just outside of the village, where the speed limit dropped without warning from fifty-five to thirty, and where most days a white police cruiser would be waiting for the unwary, out-of-town motorist. He gassed up at the BP station, astonished to note that the price of a gallon had climbed to nearly a $1.50.
Back in his car, he drove the two blocks to the Drug Mart, found a spot right in front, and went inside. He spent ten minutes picking out three Valentine’s Day cards and a Safari Barbie. He wanted to introduce Penny to camping out that summer, and he figured it would be as good a way as any to bring up the subject. When succumbing to the temptation of spending $19 on a Barbie doll, it always helped Stephen to have an adult rationalization handy.
At the checkout counter, Stephen waited patiently while the clerk, an elderly man, struggled with the keys of the cash register.
Theresa Mulholland tossed her final purchase, a jumbo-sized bag of pretzels, into her shopping cart, and aimed it for the checkout counter. She was a little embarrassed that she’d needed a cart in the first place (this was a drugstore, for God’s sake, not a supermarket), so she’d actually spent a few moments arranging her purchases so that the particularly flagrant ones were hidden by the more sociably acceptable ones. The pretzels, for example, bragged in big letters that they were only one gram of fat per serving; little could be said in defense of the family-sized Mallomars.
There was only one register open, and she got on line behind the man buying a Safari Barbie. Just the doll - no Jeep, no tent, no mosquito netting. He probably didn’t get it, that it was supposed to be, like, a set. But he was handsome, tall and kind of rumpled looking, but not in a dumb way, like the men she was always meeting. She wanted to say something to him, make some silly stab at contact, before he paid, got his change, and walked through the door and out of her nonlife. Still, what was there to say about Safari Barbie? It wasn’t really her place to take him to task on how cheap he was being to refuse to spring for the whole set, was it?
“Going to Africa?” she asked him.
He swung around and looked at her. From the serious expression on his face, it was clear that he didn’t understand she was joking, trying her hand at small talk. But he sure was nice to look at, with good cheekbones and dark eyes that promised, what? Intelligence? Kindness? Sensitivity?
She had a full head of red hair, which she wore in ringlets. He wondered if all she had to do was towel-dry it after she got out of the shower. Or maybe she had to spend half an hour with scary-looking electrical appliances to get it to look natural, the way Ada used to do. He never knew about those things.
“It’s for my daughter,” he explained.
“Really,” said the woman.
What a jerk, he thought. Of course it was for his daughter; he needn’t have said that. It was little wonder he hadn’t had a date in two years.
“That’ll be $26.50,” said the clerk.
He reached into his pocket for his wallet, locating it and an unfamiliar object as well. He brought both of them out.
“Oh, yes,” he remembered. “I need to drop this roll of film off, too. Sorry,” he said to the woman behind him.
“No problem,” she assured him.
The clerk slid him a form and a pen to fill it out with. He wrote down his name and phone number, and checked the box that said he wanted only one set of exposures, even though checking a much larger red box would have gotten him a second set at half price. He gav
e the form back to the clerk, who tore off the stub and handed it back to him, along with his change.
And then he was out the door, just like that, just as she’d known would happen, without another word between them.
Going to Africa? God almighty. If that was all she’d been able to come up with, her best line in a no-pressure setting, it was easy to understand why she had no life.
jim hall got to his office a little before ten. It was one of the perks of seniority, of being the boss. Although in Jim Hall’s case, both seniority and the boss were relative terms. At forty-two, he was indeed the senior member of the staff, in terms of both age and longevity of service; and as the District Attorney of Columbia County, it was his office to run. But the truth was there were only three lawyers in the entire office - Jim and his two assistant DAs, who were both recent law-school graduates still in their late twenties. As for his support team, as he referred to them, they consisted of a single investigator (a former deputy sheriff who’d developed a heart murmur and had to be reassigned to modified duty), an administrative aide (something they used to call a secretary), and a part-time bookkeeper. Columbia County had far less crime - and therefore far less in the way of a budget - than its sister counties to the north, Rensselaer and Albany. With no big city to mix unemployment and low-income housing into its demographic profile, Columbia County couldn’t quite make the boast that it was crime-free. But what crime there existed was pretty much restricted to a steady trickle of minor drug sales, possessions, and petty thefts right there in Hudson; after that, you were talking about driving under the influence, taking a buck out of season, and the occasional outburst of teenage vandalism. There hadn’t been a nondrug felony trial in over a year; the county jail had a dozen cells, but a current population of only five; and if anyone was thinking of mounting a campaign against the incumbent in the upcoming election, they’d kept their plans to themselves. So, all things considered, getting to the office a little before ten was actually an act of considerable civic responsibility on the part of Jim Hall.
Best Intentions Page 2