by Tracy Clark
“Why?”
“I couldn’t breathe.” I slid him a sideways glance. “I’m speaking figuratively.”
Marcus wanted to fix things, fix me, and cling while doing it. I wasn’t a clinger. I’d lost too much to make that a thing. My mother was gone, father and grandparents, too. I’d lost them all by the time I was twenty-five. It was the way of things. Friends came and went, lovers, too. Only a fool tries to hang on to impermanent things. I learned early to take life as I found it and to keep moving forward, giving only as much as I could bear to lose.
“I backed away,” I said. “I’m still doing it.”
Voigt’s pen attacked the paper. When he’d made his notation he said, “There has to be more to it than that.”
“Why? We weren’t married. We didn’t have to split a kid down the middle. It got too complicated, so we each took our marbles and went home.”
I padded over to Voigt’s desk and fiddled absentmindedly with a glass paperweight sitting there. The entire desktop was littered with strange little knickknacks and baubles nervous Nellies could hold, caress, toss, or squeeze for comfort and ballast during a fifty-minute head-shrinking session.
“Tell me about your family. Your mother died of cancer. You were twelve, a tough age for that to happen. Your father wasn’t in the picture. You were raised by your grandparents.”
I bounced the paperweight from one palm to the other. In the picture? I almost laughed. A month after my mother’s funeral, my father had packed me up and dropped me off at my grandparents’, then left town for good. He’d yammered something about it being temporary, that he’d be back soon, but I knew he was lying. I always knew when he was lying.
“Does everything have to lead back to that?”
Voigt said, “Does it?”
“I hate it when you answer a question with a question. It’s irritating. Where are you going with this, anyway?”
“Do you always have to know where things are going?”
I turned to look at him, my frustration building. “Yes.”
Voigt steeple his fingers under his chin. “It’s safer knowing, isn’t it?”
I glowered at him. “That’s the head-shrinking stuff, right?”
Voigt smiled. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try a little of it. We’ll come back to family. Can we talk about your partner? I’ve spoken to him. He’s having as rough a time as you are. You mean a great deal to him, and he obviously means a great deal to you.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Ben. It was too close, too raw. I’d seen the look in his eyes on that rooftop, and I felt guilty for being the one to have put it there. He saved my life, I saved his. We were bonded, but neither of us could face what might have been. Not yet.
“Might be helpful,” Voigt said.
“Not to me.”
“You hate being pushed. That’s something I’ve learned about you. Unfortunately, I’m kind of in the pushing business.”
I ignored him.
“Your partner,” Voigt gently pressed. “Or your parents. Your choice.”
The dying tree beyond the courtyard had offered up its last mystery, and there were no new sparrows to divert me. I weighed my options. I had a lot of them, yet I didn’t move.
“Why did you become a cop?”
I turned. Our eyes held. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
Voigt shrugged. “Because I want to know, and you won’t tell me.”
A moment passed, two, before I spoke. “Lunchbox.”
Voigt looked confused. “Want to explain?”
“No,” I said.
Voigt chuckled. “My mistake. Will you explain?”
I slammed down the paperweight and padded back to the window, my back to Voigt. Still no birds. They were probably off somewhere crapping on someone’s car. “There was a bully at school, a big oaf of a kid, a mean, nasty piece of work. He made it his life’s mission to pick on this one kid half his size—Adam Lychee. Funny, how I still remember his name.
“The oaf took Adam’s lunchbox—Spider-Man. God, I remember that, too . . . He held it up over his head and made him jump for it in front of all the kids in the schoolyard. He laughed; they laughed. I can still see the look of humiliation on Adam’s face. It made me angry, so angry I shook with it.” I slid Voigt a look, watching as he scribbled feverishly in the notepad. “I got the lunchbox back but ended up in the principal’s office. I got a three-day suspension for bloodying the oaf’s nose.
“I don’t like bullies. I didn’t like them in the schoolyard then, I don’t like them on the streets now, pushing old ladies down in the dirt for their Social Security money, preying on those who can’t protect themselves. They’re cowards. Someone has to stand up to them.”
Voigt looked up. “You?”
“Me. Someone else.”
“Just curious. Was the bully bigger than you?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“But that didn’t stop you from confronting him. Why do you think that is?”
“You’re the doctor. You tell me.”
Voigt chuckled. “My theory, and it’s just that, is that you felt compelled to right a wrong because so many things had gone wrong for you. You couldn’t do anything about your mother dying or your father leaving, but you could face the bully, get the lunchbox back. It was a need to create order where there wasn’t any, to fight for someone because your father didn’t fight for you. The bully’s size would have been irrelevant.”
I faced him, frowned. “They pay you for that psychobabble?”
He smiled. “Quite well, actually.”
“My theory? The kid was a jackass who needed his bell rung. Nobody else was willing to do it, so I stepped up. Why do you have to chew things to death?”
“Black and white, no gray?” he asked.
“Sometimes it’s just that simple.”
“You’ve lost both parents. That would likely be a devastating thing for most people. Which one did you love the most?”
I reeled. “What the hell?”
He grinned impishly. “That got your motor revved up. Your mother died. Your father left you behind. There must be some anger buried somewhere.”
“You can’t blame a person for dying. Leaving voluntarily by Amtrak? Who would you be angry at?”
He angled his head. “I think your father would be the winner there. If you had to describe each of your parents in one word, what would that word be? Your mother first.”
I rolled my eyes, sighed. This was the longest eight minutes. I reached up and fingered the gold chain around my neck. At the end of it was a ring my mother had given me when she knew she didn’t have long. She’d kissed it first, and then pressed it into my palm. My remembrance, my link.
“I’m not going to say this is fair,” Mom said, her weary head lying on the starched white pillow. “It isn’t. I wish things could be different.”
“But they aren’t,” I said.
“We’ll just have to make the best of the time we’ve got, that’s all.” She forced a smile. I could tell it cost her. “C’mon, scooch closer. . . . I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you everything about me, and won’t leave a single thing out, if you’ll tell me all the things you think I don’t know about you. That way, when we meet again, all we’ll have to do is catch up a little bit.... How’s that sound?”
I reached over to trace my fingers along the protruding veins in her frail hand. “Not a single thing?”
“Not one. Pinkie swear.”
“Cass?” Voigt’s voice drew me back. “One word to describe your mother?”
“Present,” I said. “That meant everything.”
“And your father?”
I released the chain. He hadn’t left much behind, barely even memories. He was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t. He didn’t have it in him, I figured out much later. But the world kept turning; I didn’t break. One word? I looked over at Voigt, thought about the question. “Cornered—not up for the
hard stuff. It was like he was always on the wrong side of every door, in when he wanted to be out, out when he wanted in.”
“Then maybe he did you a favor by leaving?”
I smiled a little. “That thought came to me much later. At twelve, it felt more like a sacrifice, my life for his.”
Voigt nodded, scribbled. “Interesting.” He looked up, snapped the cap back on his pen. “Good start. We’ll pick up there next session.”
I shook my head. “No thanks. I’ll go the rest of the way on my own.” I walked toward the door.
Voigt stood. “But these are mandatory sessions, Detective. I can’t clear you for active duty if you terminate them prematurely.”
I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. “I won’t need that clearance. I turned in my star a couple of hours ago.... Now you’ll ask me why.”
Voigt stared at me, an expression of concern on his face. “Consider it asked.”
I opened the door, stopped. “I burned that commendation they gave me. Farraday framed his.” I shut the door behind me.
Chapter 4
I hooked my bike onto the repair stand and grabbed an Allen wrench out of the set, humming while I worked. The rear brake pads needed to be tightened or my next morning ride down the lakefront would be my last. I’d just closed a case, the check had cleared, and I had no new clients lined up. It was April. The sun was high, the air light and clean. Heat and humidity were months away. I was a rare thing, indeed—a PI with money to keep her office lights on and time to putter around the house on a lazy afternoon. I twisted the bike’s barrel adjustment and kept the humming up. I liked humming; it lifted the spirit. Old Motown and ’70s soul, mostly, songs with words instead of grunts, sung by singers who could hold a note without having to strip bare-assed naked, paint themselves blue, or swing from construction equipment. I looked up from the bike, rolled my shoulders. Maybe I should go into the office, I thought, do something that made money? I shook my head. Nope. I’m good.
I tested the brakes, but the pads still wobbled. I checked the cable attachment and found some give in it, so I applied the wrench and hit the adjustment again, stopping after a time to shake the numbness out of the fingers on my left hand. “Damn it,” I hissed, flexing every digit.
The rooftop was two years ago, but I still carried Jimmy Pick with me. He was in the scar on my chest, in the numbness in my fingers, in every sleepless night, every night terror.
The red Bianchi Lupo was the gift I’d given myself after I handed in my star. Some cops bought sailboats when they retired, some invested in lakeside property. I bought a bike, though it took months before I could ride it. I tossed the wrench aside and ran my fingers over the spot just above my left collarbone where Jimmy’s bullet had caught me. The scar was the easy part. I’d taken a life to save two others, three if you counted mine, but that didn’t minimize the enormity, or the finality, of what I’d done. I would always carry the weight of it. That was the part that was hard.
I shook out my hand to get the feeling back. I’d finished rehab six months ago, but the bullet had nicked the nerves, leaving my left arm a little weaker than the right, at least for now. To get it back, I rode the bike, lifted weights, and spent time at the shooting range. It was slow going, but it was going.
“There,” I said when I got the brakes fixed. “All better.” A leaky faucet was next on my To-Do List. This wasn’t the life I’d imagined for myself, but it was okay. I kept it moving.
I owned the modest three-flat I lived in, left to me by my grandparents. It had been their stake and legacy, and I fussed over it as they had, babied it, really, mindful of the sacrifices made on its behalf, and mine. I’d lost my grandmother my senior year of high school, my grandfather my second year on the force, but I held fast to the building. It was my last tangible link to either of them.
The third-floor apartment came to me rent-free as a gift when I graduated from the U of I, and I accepted it gladly at the time, only to balk a few years later when I got the entire building after my grandfather died. The building wasn’t the same without them to watch over it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of selling it, knowing how hard they’d worked for it. So now I was landlord and super to three and a half tenants—Mrs. Vincent, a widow who’d worked with my grandmother at the phone company, and the Kallishes—Stuart, Marie and four-year-old Nate. Nate was the half. Mrs. Vincent had wonderful old stories about my family, and when I needed to hear them she gladly retold them over homemade shortbread.
Mrs. Vincent lived on the first floor; the Kallishes lived between us. The building didn’t pay for itself, mainly because I didn’t force it. Mrs. Vincent got by on Social Security and her late husband’s meager pension. The Kallishes, both doctoral students at the University of Chicago, studied between jobs that didn’t pay nearly enough. I liked having them around, so I ate the rent they couldn’t pay, taking on a few more jobs to make up the difference. It was a system that worked.
I grabbed my toolbox and Plumbing for Dummies. How hard could a little leak be? If I could bust up a riot with only a night stick and a can of Mace, I could certainly stop water from dripping into an old lady’s sink.
When I hit the second-floor landing, the Kallishes’ door swung open and Nate jumped out into the hall in rain boots, sweats, and a Transformers T-shirt, his wild mop of curly black hair matted from his afternoon nap, his moon face, dimpled at the cheeks, the color of soft sand. He stood there watching me, not saying anything.
“Hey, Nate.”
“I’m going to playgroup today.” His honey brown eyes stared up at me, unblinking.
“Me too,” I said.
He frowned. “You can’t. It’s only for kids.”
I squinted at him, the toolbox heavy in my hand.
“Who says?”
His little arms flew out wide. “The world.”
“Big people go to playgroup all the time. It’s called work. Ask your mommy.”
I could see the wheels turning in his little head; he angled it. “Do you get animal crackers?”
I smiled. “You got me, Nate. Big people do not get animal crackers when they go to work.”
He grinned, unable to hide the gloat, sure he’d bested me. “Ha. See?”
“Nathan Marshall Kallish,” his mother, Marie, yelled from inside.
Nate jumped, scurried back inside, and slammed the door in my face. If I were a parent, my four-year-old unlocking the door whenever the mood struck him would worry the hell out of me, but Marie, apparently, rested quite well at night.
She told me once that Nate only opened the door when he heard me in the hall. I had no idea how he knew when that was, but I imagined him lying on the floor on his side, ear pressed to the carpet, one squinted little eye peeking out from the inch and a half of clearance, listening for my footfalls. He was either a cop in training, or a stalker in training. I hoped it was the former.
“Come on back,” Mrs. Vincent said when she let me in. “You know where the kitchen is, and I got fresh muffins out there for you. Grab one.” She surveyed me intently, frowned. “Or two.”
She wasn’t anyone’s real grandmother, but she was a great stand-in with her steel-gray hair pulled back in a neat bun, a generous bosom, and a smile as warm as fresh-baked cookies. She never missed church on Sunday or bingo on Saturday night, and in all the years I’d known her, I’d never heard her utter an unkind word about anybody. She came with the building, she liked to tell people, and it was true. She was here before I moved in, and she was here now. If things kept on like they were going, she’d likely get the building in my will.
“Just started dripping, huh?” I said.
“Last night. It was like that Japanese water torture. Drip, drip, drip. It about drove me crazy.”
I was pretty sure she meant Chinese water torture, but I let it sit. That drip wasn’t going to fix itself. I padded back to the kitchen and got to work, the smell of the cooling muffins vying for my attention. It felt like forever that my head was under Mr
s. Vincent’s sink. I ate three muffins while trying to decipher Plumbing for Dummies, but I thought I finally had it. I crawled out from under the sink and called for her.
I heaved out a sigh. “I think that does it.”
She clasped her hands together. “I knew you’d get it.”
I reached for the spigot. “Let’s test it.”
I turned the handle slowly, cold water, not hot, and braced myself. The water poured out smooth as anything, and a giant smile crept over my face and Mrs. Vincent’s.
“Your granddaddy would be so proud of you.”
Suddenly, the pipes began to make a horrendous sound, like a wildebeest in heat, then the fixtures began to shake and groan as an impressive eruption of violent water shot up out of the drain and soaked me through and through. I yelped. Mrs. Vincent yelped. Scurrying under the sink again, I twisted the cutoff valve and shut the water down, but it was too late for my clothes or Mrs. Vincent’s kitchen drapes.
Slowly, I tossed my tools back into the box, shut it, and squished over to the phone hanging wet on the wall. Mrs. Vincent stood there, nice as anything, wringing water out of her housecoat.
“Who’re you calling?” she asked.
“A plumber.”
* * *
I backed out of Mrs. Vincent’s door with a $250 receipt from Speedy Plumbers clutched in my hand, my feet squishing inside my Nikes, and two more of her muffins in my toolbox. I should have gone into plumbing instead of investigations. It paid better and nobody told you to mind your own business. The knock at the vestibule door startled me, and I turned to find Father Ray Heaton standing on the other side, smiling sweetly. I opened the door.
“Pop, what’re you doing here?”
He noticed the soaking, shot me an amused grin. “I was in the neighborhood. What in blue blazes?” The sounds of New Orleans tripped off his tongue as easy as anything; his eyes twinkled mischievously. “You been swimming somewhere?”
We had a standing date for chess and life talk every Wednesday night that had been going on since I was a kid. Twenty years on, we were still keeping it up, though the chitchat part had graduated from peer pressure, homework, and high school, to more adult subjects, which sometimes got a little dicey when you were discussing them with a priest. Pop had helped my grandparents raise me, offering guidance, counsel, and perspective to all of us when we needed it most. They’d lost their only child and never got over it, holding tight to me, her facsimile, as though that would give them a little bit of her back. Meanwhile, I kicked out at grief in ways that sometimes overwhelmed them, never by design. My childhood was rough, the last two years rougher, but Pop was always there to make sense of it; he remained a constant, my North Star. Today was Tuesday, though, not Wednesday, and he wasn’t holding his lucky chessboard.