Just Mercy: A Novel

by Dorothy Van Soest

  “No child should be treated the way Rae was.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We know all her excuses, Mom. Abuse. Neglect. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  “Why didn’t she run away?” Patty said. “Like, that’s what I’d do.”

  “She wouldn’t leave her brothers and sister. She ran away from several foster homes later.”

  “Why?”

  “Enough with the questions, Patty.” Annamaria dismissed her daughter with a wave of her hand.

  “It’s a sad story,” Bernadette said. “She was sexually abused in two foster homes. After that, no matter where they placed her, she ran.”

  “Everyone failed her,” Fin said. “Everyone.”

  Bernadette shook her head as Annamaria slammed her fists on the table and stalked out of the room. It was just the reaction she’d expected.

  ***

  Unable to listen to them anymore, Annamaria stumbled from the dining room, her head spinning and her breath coming in short spurts. In the front hallway, she fell back against the closet door. Her legs were shaking. Was she the only one who could see how Mom had been totally taken in by that monster, to the point that she’d even given her a nickname? What the hell? Did she think they were good friends now or something? Why couldn’t she see that sympathizing with Veronica’s murderer was the same as excusing her?

  An army of goose bumps attacked her bare arms and made her shiver. She rummaged through the hall closet, slapping aside the winter coats and jackets, wanting to punish them for being so crammed together. Her fingers landed on the soft angora of what was once Veronica’s favorite cardigan. She couldn’t believe her mom had left it in the closet all these years. With trembling fingers, she slipped the sweater from the hanger and buried her face in its light-blue folds. She inserted one hand into one sleeve and the other hand into the other sleeve, then pulled the sweater on, held it tight against her body with her eyes closed, and breathed in her sister’s essence.

  ***

  Bernadette started to stand up but then seemed to change her mind. Fin figured she must have decided to wait for Annamaria to come back to the table on her own, so he decided that he, too, should wait. But as the minutes ticked away, he worried that his sister might not come back at all, that maybe she’d even left the house.

  “Sit tight,” he said as he picked up the lasagna pan. “Chuck and I will clear the table and get the dessert.” He kissed his mom on her cheek—his way of letting her know he was glad she’d come around about Raelynn Blackwell, that he always knew she would.

  On his way to the kitchen, he caught a glimpse of Annamaria out in the hallway. She looked like she was crying. He put the pan on the counter and went to her.

  “You okay, sis?”

  “I’m tired is all. I was up until three o’clock this morning working, okay?”

  “Right.”

  “Mom’s too naïve for Patty’s good, Fin. I have to protect her.”

  He knew she was scared that what happened to Veronica could happen to Patty, too, but there was no point in telling her he understood that. She would deny it, wouldn’t even listen to him.

  “Come on, let’s clean up,” he said as he steered her back toward the dining room.

  Annamaria picked up the empty salad bowl and breadbasket as if she was trying to pull herself together. It pained Fin to see the way she avoided looking at their mom.

  “I know you don’t agree with her,” he said once they were in the kitchen, “but you’ve got to admit what Mom’s doing is pretty darn amazing.”

  “Getting all buddy-buddy with that monster is just plain wrong, Fin. It’s crazy. And downright disrespectful to Veronica.”

  “Au contraire, mon amour. Mom is doing just what Veronica would want her to do.” He handed a plate to Chuck, who set about loading the dishwasher with self-conscious deliberation.

  “So now you think you have the inside track on Veronica’s wishes.”

  “Ah, but I do. Believe me, Veronica is very happy with Mom right now.” Fin knew he sounded flippant, but he didn’t mean to be. He was just trying to lighten Annamaria’s spirits. He felt sorry for her.

  “Can you imagine what other people would think if they heard Mom talking like this?” she said. “I can sure tell you what people at my office would think.”

  “That’s what you’re worried about? What other people think about Mom?”

  “The governor should reconsider.”

  “She made the right decision,” he said, “just maybe not for the right reason. Come on, let’s not argue. What’s done is done.”

  “It should be done. But it’s not, is it?”

  Fin took a deep breath. What his sister needed right now was a hug, not a fight. He put his hand on her shoulder, and when she didn’t flinch or turn away he moved closer. But then he felt the soft angora of Veronica’s familiar sweater, and it drove him to his knees.

  “Please try to understand,” he whispered as he grabbed onto the counter to pull himself up. “I promised Veronica.”

  ***

  While the others were cleaning up in the kitchen, Marty instigated a debate with Patty about the quality of education today while Bernie silently observed.

  “You have to admit,” Marty said, “the system has improved considerably in both technology and sophistication.”

  “School is for shit, Grandpa,” Patty said. “You’re just too old and out of touch to know it.”

  He smiled, captivated by Patty’s spunk, so much like Veronica. He lobbed one question after another at her, sticking to his original position not because he thought it was the correct one but as a way to help his granddaughter hone her critical thinking skills—and, he had to admit, to keep himself from worrying about what the rest of the evening might have in store for all of them.

  When Annamaria, Fin, and Chuck came back into the dining room, Bernie started talking as if there had been no break between dinner and dessert. Marty didn’t object, grateful for a reprieve before it was his turn.

  “Rae wants to see her mother before she dies,” Bernie said. “I’m going to help find her.”

  “What the hell!” Annamaria’s eyes flashed. “This is just unbelievable… un–be–lieve–able!” Her hand flew up and almost tipped over a water glass.

  Marty held his breath. No matter how many times he’d witnessed Annamaria’s anger before, he’d never seen her this livid. He withdrew the bowl of spumoni ice cream he had been just about to pass to her out of fear that she might throw it back at him or onto the floor.

  “It is pretty unbelievable,” Bernie said, “and it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You’re something else, Mom.” Marty thought Fin’s smile was almost wide enough to swallow up his ears.

  “Do you think you will, Gran? Find her, I mean?”

  “I hope so, Patty. But then I’ll have to convince her to go see Rae.”

  “Fuck that!” Annamaria’s mouth fell open like a door with a broken hinge. Her eyes bulged as if they were about to pop out of her face.

  “Watch your language, young lady,” Marty said. “It won’t do anybody any good, including you, to get so worked up.” He saw everyone look at him, shocked by his outburst. He was shocked by it himself.

  Annamaria’s eyes were fixed on Bernie in that I dare you way usually characteristic of a teenager in full-blown sulk mode. A standoff was in the offing, and Marty knew what would happen if he let it deteriorate into one of their classic mother-daughter showdowns. They were too much alike, those two. That had been obvious to him ever since Annamaria was a toddler.

  “It’s useless,” he said, “when you both dig in your heels like this.”

  Bernie opened her mouth, and he shot her a warning look. Don’t make it any worse. Looking nonplussed, she sat back in her chair. Good. Message received.

  “I have something else to tell you,” he said, glancing at his watch, “but first let’s finish our dessert and then go into the living room.”

  SEVENTEEN

&nbs
p; Bernadette closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of her chair by the fireplace. As she waited for her family to reconvene, her mind wandered back to decades earlier.

  “How’s it going?” she remembered asking Marty when he was writing his philosophy dissertation.

  “How do you eat an elephant?” That was always his response.

  “One bite at a time,” they would say in unison.

  Well, she thought now, Fin and Annamaria had digested their first bite of the elephant—the news about her intentions to help Rae—pretty much as she’d expected. Fin was happy, Annamaria upset. But of course she hadn’t told them everything. She hadn’t told Marty everything at first, either, until he’d caught her talking on the phone the other day.

  “Who was that?” he’d asked after she hung up.

  “Some clerk at the Lubbock City Hall,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how many women there are in Texas named Maxine Blackwell or something similar.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Internet searches. Phone calls. I only have a few left.”

  She didn’t tell Marty right away how many long-distance calls she’d made to city halls and other government agencies in Texas and the surrounding states. In fact, it wasn’t until hours later, after she’d finished her search, that she told him everything. But she wasn’t ready to tell the others yet. If Annamaria knew about all the time and effort Bernadette had already put into searching for Maxine Blackwell, she would either be out the door or planning to have her mom committed to a mental hospital.

  It was best not to reveal her plan to drive to Killeen, either. No, if she told Annamaria she was going to go to the last known address for the woman who best fit the description of Rae’s mother, well, that just might be one bite of elephant too much for her to handle. Besides, there was no need to disclose anything else until she found Rae’s mother. If she found her.

  At the sound of Marty walking in front of her, Bernadette opened her eyes and watched him sit down in his chair on the other side of the fireplace. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He started tapping his foot.

  “Don’t you think they’ve had enough to deal with tonight?” he asked in a low voice.

  “It’ll be all right,” she said.

  She didn’t say that just to reassure him about the kids. After going with Marty to the doctor, she had no doubt that he was going to be okay. Everyone at the medical center had been so pleasant, so positive. Especially Dr. Sortiev. When she whipped out her list of questions, Marty’s oncologist had calmly answered every one of them without a single blink of an eye—and with an encouraging smile, to boot. Even when she let him know in no uncertain terms that some of his answers were insufficient, the man—how old was he, about seventy, maybe?—peered over the wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his long nose and let her know, without the slightest hint of impatience or arrogance, that he knew what he was doing. By the time she and Marty had left the clinic, she had been convinced that this cancer thing was just a bump in the road, one they would drive over and then be done with. She held onto that now. She had to. Not just for the kids but for her, too.

  Soon the others were in the living room, huddled together on the leather couch. Fin’s right arm was around Patty’s shoulder, her head resting on his chest. Fin’s other hand was placed on Chuck’s knee in a protective way, as if to reassure him that he belonged with the family, while Chuck, his back erect and hands folded in his lap, looked as if he was being held hostage. Annamaria sat on the other side of Patty with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, her face a frozen scowl. Bernadette wondered how long it would take her to get over the shock and disappointment of hearing about her plan to help Rae. It was something she obviously had not expected to hear.

  With everyone’s attention now turned toward Marty, Bernadette could tell he was clearly wavering. This isn’t the most propitious time to tell them, she imagined him saying to her with his eyes. When he looked over at the door as if he was plotting his escape, she got up and walked over to his chair.

  “I’ll help if you get stuck,” she whispered in his ear. Four pairs of worried eyes watched her kiss his forehead and then followed her back to her chair.

  “Go ahead, Marty,” she said as she sat down.

  He coughed. Took a breath. “It’s nothing to worry about.” He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He shrugged his shoulders at Bernadette as if to say this was the best he could do; at least it was a start.

  “Your dad’s right,” she said. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Annamaria unfolded her arms and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, chin resting in her hands.

  “Come on, what is it, Dad? Mom?” Fin asked. “What’s going to be okay?”

  “Prostate cancer treatments are very successful.”

  Bernadette breathed a sigh of relief. There, it was out. But the stunned silence that followed worried her. Maybe Marty had blurted the news out too fast? She wondered if it had sounded garbled to them. Why didn’t anyone say anything? Then she saw Fin and Annamaria exchange worried looks. Next, Patty burst into tears, and Annamaria put her arm around her daughter and pulled her close. Chuck grabbed Fin’s hand. It appeared that they got the part of the message about Marty having cancer, but not the other part—not the part about it being common and curable, not the part about everything was going to be all right.

  “I have a good doctor,” Marty said. “I’m fine.”

  “How long have you known?” Annamaria asked.

  When Marty winced at the accusation, Bernadette could tell he still felt guilty about sneaking off to the doctor without her knowledge and keeping the test results a secret for so long.

  “That’s not important,” she said.

  A look of relief crossed Marty’s face—the same look he’d had right after he’d confessed the news to her. Just before he’d broken down and cried.

  “Your mom’s taking good care of me,” he said, “and my oncologist is most reassuring. I’m in good hands.”

  “What’s the prognosis, Daddy?” Annamaria’s voice, no longer angry, sounded the way it had when she was a little girl.

  “It’s not like I’m going to die,” Marty said. “Not that I’m afraid of death, you understand. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to die. But we all know that life in this world is limited. Some even maintain that death just might be our highest fulfillment, the crown of our existence.”

  Bernadette raised her palms and shot him her sternest look, the one that warned do not go there.

  “All I’m saying is that none of us gets guarantees,” he said. “We all die sooner or later. It’s the way things are.”

  Bernadette shook her head. She understood that pontificating about death was Marty’s misguided way of trying to reassure everyone. She also knew that what he said was a simple statement of reality, his reality, and a source of considerable comfort for him. The truth for him, or at least what he liked to believe was the truth, was that society created an irrational fear that made death almost impossible for people to face it as a natural part of life. But even though she knew this was how Marty thought, it was not helpful, considering the circumstances, for him to impose it on his family right now.

  “Dad just doesn’t want you to worry,” she said.

  Marty sighed and looked at her, sheepish. She gave him a warm smile that she hoped would comfort him more than any philosophical treatise ever could. She thought again about how, in spite of—or maybe because of—their differences, the two of them made a good team, how together they were whole.

  ***

  Annamaria was taken aback, not only by what she’d just heard, but also by Fin’s response. It wasn’t like him to be this angry, much less at Dad and at something as serious as this.

  “Why didn’t you tell us before?” he asked with lips pursed as if he was about to spit. “And how can you expect us not to worry when we know nothing ab
out your condition? Mom? Dad?”

  Fin fell back onto the couch then, with his chin tucked in and his arms crossed over his chest, which made Annamaria wonder if that’s what she looked like when she was angry. She reached across Patty and laid her hand on Fin’s knee to calm him down, but he ignored her.

  “Come on, Dad,” he said, “could you stop tiptoeing around the tough stuff just this once?”

  “Like I said, the doctor is optimistic,” Marty said. “There’s no need to worry.”

  “You can’t know that,” Fin shot back.

  Patty poked Annamaria in the side with her elbow, and Annamaria saw that her daughter’s eyes were filled with a kind of terror that she’d never seen in them before. She was obviously begging her to do something, to take charge, to fix things.

  “Let’s step back and look at this,” Annamaria said in a tone deliberately calibrated to let Patty know that she was in charge, that she would keep Fin under control. “What stage is it, Dad?”

  “It’s curable.”

  “What stage, Dad?” Fin’s voice was tight, impatient.

  “What … what’s most important for you to know is that the success rate is very good.”

  Annamaria took a deep breath. “How good, Dad?” she asked.

  “Dr. Sortiev says each case is different, but he’s very positive about mine. So, that’s it.”

  “Dad. Stop it,” Fin barked.

  “The surgery your dad will have is done all the time,” Bernadette said.

  “You can’t tell us you’re not worried, Mom,” Fin said.

  “Of course I’m worried. But it’s going to be all right.”

  Annamaria knew the tone in her mom’s voice signaled that she meant for the conversation to be over, but Fin’s jagged breathing next to her told her he was having none of that. “And then treatments?” she said, keeping her voice steady, the conversation rational and factual. “How many?”

  “We’ve got it covered,” Marty said.

  “We have a right to know more, Dad.” Fin’s anger was now tinged with worry. “Are we at risk? Is it genetic?”

  “No, no,” Marty said. “You’re all healthy. This just happens sometimes.”