What kind of a name is Hollis for a Catholic girl? Rita gave Kay an anxious look.
You think she’s Catholic?
She told me, said Rita.
Well, she can call herself truck or pinecone or Achilles. She’s a godsend. She’s the best thing going in that hospital.
Rita nodded, leaned against the door, looked out through the downpour.
I’m sorry. Kay touched her hand. You know what? I think it helps her. It helps to have a strange name.
Rita patted Kay’s hand in return. You must be planning to visit Will on Monday.
Monday?
And I’d like to go with you. If that’s all right. I’d like to do that. Kay put her fingertips to her mouth.
His birthday?
Yes, of course. Kay nodded. But I’m not going. No. Will definitely wouldn’t want it.
That can’t be.
It’s true. But maybe we could try to reach him tomorrow. There are certain times to call. We could make sure to do that.
Rita said nothing and studied Kay’s steady eyes and then her profile and then, when she turned completely away, the back of her head. Rita looked at Kay, at the streaky blond hair, all sunlight even in this dismal old cab on a gray day, and felt she understood very little about this girl. Nothing at all, really, after all these years. They rode the next ten blocks in silence.
On Fifth Avenue, Kay checked her wallet for cash. Two days ago Jerry Henderson had called from the bank to raise a flag, that’s what he said, Just raising a flag here, Kay, just thought you needed to know. He would cover everything she’d already written, but she’d have to sell something. Just give him a buzz when she had her ducks in a row. The windshield wipers barely cleared the glass. Mother of God, said the cabbie. Did you ever see so much water?
The doorman at the St. Regis unfurled the tent-size umbrella over Rita’s bent head as Kay grabbed the bags. Here, she said, leading Rita to the first silk chair inside the revolving door, here, sit and dry off, I’ll see if our room is ready. Kay stepped across the marble floor to the gold and ivory front desk, manned by a tall, thin boy whose bad complexion made his lips crack in the corners. Kay looked to his eyes, away from the mess of his face, and said her name. He pulled open the register and sighed. I’m afraid not, Mrs. Clemens.
There must be some mistake. Perhaps Mr. Dunlop put the reservation in his own name. He called for me. He called to make the booking. Mr. Daniel Dunlop.
No. I’m afraid not.
But you aren’t looking.
Mrs. Clemens.
Perhaps Mr. Franklin, the manager, could help me.
Mr. Franklin will return next Monday and will certainly help you.
Kay read the name engraved on the gold band dipping from his lapel: Crispin Philpot.
Mr. Philpot, we haven’t met before, but I’m a frequent guest at the St. Regis.
Mrs. Clemens, you are not a guest of the St. Regis today. He turned away to fluff a waiting flower arrangement.
A small ring of pain began to throb behind her right eye. She glanced back at Rita, who slumped into the silk madrigals and reindeer. Kay had about fourteen dollars in cash. Her father was on a cruise on the Baltic Sea. Her husband was in prison upstate. Her son was unconscious in the hospital twenty blocks north. Her daughter was eating herself into a linebacker on the Jersey Shore. Her mother-in-law was losing her bearings in the lobby of a hotel run by a scarred teenager in his apprentice course on abuse of power. These inventories were not helpful. She pushed her wet hair off her forehead. I’ll be back, Mr. Philpot.
Kay knelt down in front of Rita and touched her knees, the hem of her dress soaked despite everything. Well, I’d hoped for martinis in bed. Rita patted her hand. But I think instead we might check out the cathedral. It’s only a couple of blocks away. And it will be warm and dry. In the meantime, I’ll find out from Dan what the snag is here.
Is there a problem? Maybe I could do something.
No. No.
Kay parked their bags with the doorman and gave him ten of her fourteen dollars. Lofted her cardigan above Rita’s head and sailed down Fifth Avenue until they gained the side entrance of St. Patrick’s. The vestibule was slick and dark and damp, but inside, Mass was already in progress. Incense spiraled down from the altar, the priest in plain green silks climbed the pulpit for the homily. Rita found a pew up close. Kay whispered that she’d return when she’d sorted things out and left Rita there. Outside, beneath the dripping eaves, she smoked four cigarettes and watched the rain pour down.
Now well past the appointed hour, Kay let the doorman battle the elements to get her back inside the St. Regis, where she hoped to find Dan Dunlop. The lobby was deserted, even Crispin Philpot had abandoned his post. A bellhop slunk into shadow and vanished. Then, in a distant corner, tucked away from the potential bustle of the entrance and front desk and elevators, Kay spotted one foot tapping, like the movement of a cat. A shiny black patent-leather loafer tapped away, visible just beyond the bounds of the high green sofa. She edged closer and craned around the velvet curve. It was Roy. Head wrapped in a pair of puffy earphones. He spoke in a whisper into a full-size microphone connected by a thick cord to a black plastic box in his lap.
What are you doing here? Kay touched his shoulder. What are you doing?
Kay. Darling. Roy pushed the plastic box and the microphone and the headset aside. Come and sit down. You’re here. Sorry. Listen, you’re here. Sit. Sit down. What do you think? Frank Reilly’s idea. Better than a pad and very portable. Where’s Rita? Roy waved toward the front desk. He stood and waved. Crispin Philpot rose up from behind the counter and scuttled across the marble floor. So, said Roy, tell me everything.
There’s a big problem here, Kay said.
Not really.
She looked mid-lobby to the frown looming toward her on Crispin Philpot’s face. Here he comes, she said, he’s not very nice.
How important is personality, really. When you get right down to it. Net-net.
What are you talking about?
Roy pointed to an alligator briefcase by his feet. Without a word, Crispin Philpot bent toward it like a lover. Kay watched him carry the case away and suddenly felt she would cry, almost like a sneeze coming. She touched the sleeve of Roy’s jacket, just to hold something. What is this? I’ve never seen anything like it.
Summer-weight angora. Esther’s idea. Itches like the devil.
Very bunny.
Don’t let Esther hear you say that. He glanced toward the wall as if afraid. He glanced at tall Crispin Philpot entering the service elevator with the alligator valise. Esther only likes to know I look distinguished. Anything else gets the wooden ear.
In general, Roy liked mothers. He liked his own mother very much, and he was partial to other mothers, gave them the benefit of the doubt. Almost always. There were probably some exceptions. But while Will was in this time of inconvenience, Roy had been making it up to him, sending little things to Rita Clemens, subtle things so she wouldn’t always know. And he’d covered a couple of—not exactly indiscretions, but lapses, for Jack Clemens as well. This was Dan’s job, and he was good with the details.
When Roy went to find Rita, he entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral through the chancel. It was an entrance not too many people knew about, mostly used by brides and clergy and actually inconvenient in the rain, but Roy used it anyway. Rita didn’t see him coming. Mass was over, and Rita was walking the stations of the cross. Marking time before some very graphic depictions of a very violent story. Roy didn’t really get the appeal. The Jews did it better, he thought. Installed directly in the blood cells. If you were looking for a good time on this earth, in this life, look elsewhere. He felt it in himself, but a lot of him didn’t believe it. A low-level conflict.
Poor Rita Clemens turned a face as wretched as anything carved on the wall. Oh Roy, she said. How could you.
Rita, dear. He gestured toward a pew. That boy, that mother’s son, convinced her to sit where he pointed. Just to
give him a minute of her time.
All right, she’d listen to what he had to say.
They edged together, all the way in, close to the column, in full view of the altar and the acolyte in white surplice who snuffed each gold-tipped candle. Roy held Rita’s hand still in his own.
Mostly what he wanted to say was this: There was a vendetta, she knew what that meant. It was aimed at him, not Will, from high places, she knew who they were. As hard as that was to believe, it was true. And her son had done the right thing, resisted irresistible pressure, and in doing so, had taken a fall. This was not to save Roy’s hide, as some had suggested. His skin wasn’t worth a minute of Will’s time. Will had done what he did because he was a decent man who couldn’t be forced to lie. Roy would not forget. No matter what happened, even if he himself was in jail, as a lot of people were predicting, he might even say hoping, and for a lot longer than Will Clemens. Roy would not let this brave thing her son had done become a faded, forgotten memory. Did Rita understand?
Rita Clemens waited a long time before she nodded.
Bo was lucky enough to get Mrs. Westerfield for his first-grade teacher at Holy Cross. Although Bo had attended school for only fifteen full days, and it was June, he was still a favorite with Mrs. Westerfield. Lou-Lou knew that. If Mrs. Westerfield lined up her class in the yard at the end of recess, she’d take her eyes off the malcontents, the troublemakers, and say: Hello Lou-Lou! And how’s our Bo doing? Lou-Lou would always answer that Bo was doing very well, thank you. And Mrs. Westerfield would smile in a special way, a prayerful way, as if she were a saint showering down a few blessings on Lou-Lou, malcontent, troublemaker, to be transmitted to Bo, her brother.
Lou-Lou soaked up all the good attention she could get, but she knew—couldn’t help but know—that Mrs. Westerfield didn’t care for her half as much as she did for Bo. Lou-Lou had been transferred from Sister Charitina’s first grade into Mrs. Westerfield’s class two years before because Sister Charitina was getting older. She looked to be about ninety, and she had no tolerance for loud, obstreperous, joke-telling little girls. When Lou-Lou landed in Mrs. Westerfield’s lap, she knew she was in the right place because Mrs. Westerfield was so beautiful. Her beehive hair was salt- and-pepper-colored, she had strong crinkles around her brown eyes, and she was bone-thin, a wire hanger, with legs she twined around each other when she sat in the low chair during reading time. No one sat in her actual lap because she was too skinny. But Lou-Lou often imagined herself there, cradled in the plaid of her skirt, touching the hem. In reality, Lou-Lou was often in the corner, or out in the hallway, or waiting to see Sister Mary Arthur, the principal.
Lou-Lou was fat, or at least that’s what her mother said, and that was another reason Mrs. Westerfield preferred Bo, who was vastly underweight, just the way she was. Sometimes Lou-Lou wondered if Mrs. Westerfield was sick too, and the thought brought tears, tears that bordered on a drag-down kind of crying. She wouldn’t start because it would be very hard to stop, so if it happened during chapel, if she saw Mrs. Westerfield’s bony white hand touching the head of some good boy, Lou-Lou would lay her own head down on the pew in front of her and pray first not to cry and then to be thin someday so that Mrs. Westerfield would like her too.
When Bo started school, it was a big production. Mrs. Wester-field even got Mrs. Oates, the principal’s assistant, to watch her class on the first day of school so that she could talk things over with Lou-Lou’s mom, get to know Bo in a special way. But Lou-Lou knew Bo was just not that interesting. He didn’t talk much. He liked to make models but not paint them. He put decals on instead. In a fort situation he was useless, couldn’t build, couldn’t guard. He was good at card games, especially war and old maid. He was patient with clay, seldom squished things halfway through an idea. He had a good laugh, that was a very good thing about him, she had to admit, but still.
And now Bo had the worst attendance record in the entire history of Holy Cross School. And everyone loved him anyway. At least in the lower school, kindergarten through third grade. He was like a movie star. Sister Mary Arthur liked to lead decades of the rosary about him over the loudspeaker. She’d hitch on to the microphone like she was leading campfire songs: All right now, boys and girls, here’s one for Bo. The third-graders, Lou-Lou’s classmates, and the whole rest of the school all had to stop what they were doing and recite out loud, standing still beside their desks, hands pressed together, fingertips pointing to the ceiling. There were some kids who liked it, Anthony Hoffman, Catherine McCarthy, who felt they were doing some saintly stuff, but for the most part, Lou-Lou got slit-eyed, unhappy looks during these sessions and people didn’t talk to her much in the yard, besides Mrs. Westerfield, that is.
One day in January, Bo had been well enough to come to school. So at lunchtime their mom brought him in. Kay found Lou-Lou sitting on the end of the slide stuffing snow into her boots. What are you doing?
Nothing.
Why don’t you run around a little, that’s what recess is for. Did you drink your Tab?
Lou-Lou nodded.
Bo is with Mrs. Westerfield.
Lou-Lou scanned the play yard but couldn’t see them.
I want you to help Bo on the bus this afternoon, you have to take care of him, he’s never been on it before. Gert will pick you up at the stop because I have to do some bank stuff. Okay? Okay. And listen, if Rufus comes? You tell Sister Mary Arthur right away. He doesn’t work for us anymore. You are not to talk to him. I love you, run around a little.
Her mother’s car coat had a nice swing to it, like a bell, ding-dong, ding-dong, all the way across the yard to her Thunderbird. Her mother was thinking hard with her head down and forgot to wave. Lou-Lou put some more snow in her boots.
At a quarter to three Mrs. Westerfield arrived with Bo, leading him by the hand. Bo looked tired. His baseball hat was on crooked, and before she handed him over to Sister Barbara, Mrs. Westerfield straightened out the brim, pulled it tight on his skull. Good-bye, little soldier, she said, as if she wouldn’t see him again for a long time, which turned out to be true, then she kissed him on each cheek. Bo smiled and laughed, his good laugh. So even though Mrs. Westerfield was already halfway out the door, she had to pirouette, do an about-face. She ran back to Bo and swept him up in her arms and hugged him tight, a rocking, swaying hug with an extra kiss on the landing. She nodded a brief military nod at Sister Barbara, then disappeared. The class was speechless, Lou-Lou most of all. No one had ever seen Mrs. Westerfield pick up anything larger than an eraser, much less a child. Bo was the only one unmoved by this, he just smiled and waved at Lou-Lou: There she was! He shuffled down the aisle to her desk. Lou-Lou could barely remember her own name at the moment. Mrs. Westerfield. Mrs. Westerfield. Lou-Lou stood to give Bo her seat. Sister Barbara signaled her row. Lou-Lou went to the closet to collect her coat. She put on her wet boots. She felt like crying, but this was a bad place to start. When her class was ready to line up for the bus, she took Bo by the hand. He wasn’t wearing any mittens. She searched his pockets and found the blue ones. Here, Bo, she said.
Ann Louise Clemens, are you shopping for a detention? We can keep the whole class here until you finish your discussion. Then Sister Barbara let them go.
On the bus, Lou-Lou found an empty seat for the two of them near the back. She sat by the window because she wanted to look out and ignore people as much as possible. Everyone, especially the big kids, the fifth- and sixth-graders, stared at them getting on. Everyone always stared at them when they were together, she was fat, he was thin. Lou-Lou ignored them.
The bus started in silence, but then in an instant the shrieking began, yelling, screaming kids fighting, then someone, some big boy, took Bo’s hat. He tossed it forward and someone caught it and tossed it higher, up toward the front. Bo’s little bluish hands were up on his scalp. Oh, oh, he said, get it, Lou-Lou, and Lou-Lou looked ahead. It was Marky Kennedy. Hey Telly Savalas, he said, hey Yul Brynner, hey Easter egg, and Bo cried, and Lou-Lo
u sat still. She saw the hat, now all dirty with slush on the rubber-grooved mat of the aisle. The hat was smashed there, up near the bus driver. Marky Kennedy, star of the sixth-grade basketball team, kicked it back two rows: Hey golf-ball head, hey! What’s the matter with your brother, you eat all his food? Lou-Lou didn’t say anything. You eat all his hair ? She kept still. Bo cried and cried, he was starting to cough with his crying, it was the bad dragging cry she tried to avoid always. Bo was crying. Ping-Pong head. Pool ball. Bo cried harder, then he was choking. Before Lou-Lou knew it, Bo was throwing up all over her uniform, all over her boots. His mittens were soaked and there was blood there, too. He’s sick! He’s sick! the big boys yelled to the driver. Pull over. And Lou-Lou held on to Bo’s head. Stop, Bo, she whispered, it was the only thing she said. And he kept crying until the police came and the ambulance and their mother.
June 6
Esther Kinder and Merrill Mandel stretched out on the long curved white leather cushion at the stern of the Wavemaker II. Both wore tiny bikinis, something Esther had mailed in from France, in an envelope, that was the trick. The bikinis were made of blue airmail paper. At the boat basin, this seemed inappropriate. Roy thought maybe Captain Charlie Peeko should be issuing some kind of dress code, a what-to-wear-on-board statement. Roy was too weary to do it himself.
All night he’d been up with Dan Dunlop and Frank Reilly. Looking at briefs. Depositions. Back issues of Esquire. In a week they’d be back in court. They were trying to find a way out of the hole the prosecution had been making deeper and deeper since the mistrial in April. Now he needed a break. You just took a break, said Dan. Call me if you have a problem, said Roy.
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