"A kind of performance art."
"Exactly. I make goofy bets, but educated goofy bets. If it's not too crowded at the betting windows, I like to watch the post parade, pick out the horse who looks like he's ready to run a good race."
"How can you tell a winner, just by looking?"
"Well, as I said, nothing's foolproof. But I like the ones whose ears are straight up, and look kind of prancey. My favorite race of all is the very last one on Preakness Day."
"Isn't that the Preakness?"
"Uh-uh. Preakness is the penultimate race. The last race is just a little stakes race, no big deal. Half the paid attendance has already left. But I've always had good luck at that race. Hit an exacta there just this year."
"I thought you said the exacta was a sucker's bet."
"It is."
Jackie actually smiled, although she tried to hide it behind the rim of her glass.
"So you do have a sense of humor."
"Who said I didn't?"
"You don't laugh at most of my jokes."
"Did it ever occur to you that most of your jokes aren't very funny?"
Tess pretended to clutch her heart. "What perfidy."
"Truthfully, it's good to hear you cutting up the way you usually do. You seemed a little distracted this evening. Is everything all right? What was the deal with that guy who wanted to see you this morning?"
"I've had some…unexpected developments on another case."
Jackie hesitated, then said as if reciting a phrase from a foreign language handbook: "Do you want to talk about it?"
"It wouldn't be ethical. You wouldn't want me chatting about your case with another client, right? Besides, if the cops do come after me, I can't maintain I'm entitled to client-attorney privilege if I've been blabbing about the case all over town."
"Could that really happen?"
"It's possible."
"Could it happen any time soon?"
Tess had to laugh at Jackie's worried face. "Don't worry, Miss Weir. I'll be here tomorrow night, ready to continue the survey of Johnson-Johnstons of North Baltimore County."
She signaled the bartender for another round, but Jackie covered the rim of her glass. "I have too long a drive home."
"Not me," Tess said. "Did you know James M. Cain had a snowball machine and used it to make mint juleps? I bet they weren't half as good as these, though."
Some people she knew could have talked about that single detail for hours. But Jackie's imagination wasn't engaged by long-dead writers, not even ones who knew the secrets of every hash house waitress and insurance man.
"You always want more, don't you?"
"Huh?"
"I was thinking of that photo back in your office. More juleps, more rides on the flying rabbit, more chocolate malts."
"I did love malted milkshakes. I always asked for an extra teaspoon of malt. Poppa would give it to me, Gramma wouldn't." Suddenly, the second julep didn't seem so delicious. Second helpings never did. "Gee, isn't it shocking that I developed an eating disorder, what with one grandparent urging all those treats on me, and the other one always trying to take them away?"
"An eating disorder. Now that's real white-girl craziness. Anorexia?"
"No, just a little garden-variety bulimia. An occasional binge, followed by an occasional purge with the help of Ipecac. Exercise was my coping mechanism. I was running ten miles a day when I was in high school, doing endless sit-ups in my room. By the time my parents finally figured out I wasn't even on the track team, I had shin splints like you wouldn't believe."
"Then you just stopped?"
Tess was thinking about the food they had left in her office. She had eaten quite a bit, yet there was still so much left. They had wrapped it up and put it in the refrigerator, except for the pad thai, which Jackie would take home. There was a time when even that would have been too risky. She would have thrown it away, or forced Jackie to take it. She wouldn't have trusted herself to behave responsibly around so much food.
"Overeating is like alcoholism, except that you don't have the option of going cold turkey. Everyone has to eat, right? On top of that, I have to exercise, because I'm addicted to the endorphin rush. I just brought both activities into almost-normal limits. I started rowing, which isn't as hard on the knees, and I alternate my runs with weight workouts. I also resigned myself to life as a mesomorph. Women think I should lose ten pounds, men think I'm fine the way I am." She grinned. "That's better than the obverse, isn't it? Unless, of course, you're a regular customer here."
"You look fine. As I said before, white girl craziness."
"Really? Then why did you get so upset when Willa Mott kept saying you were fat?"
Jackie made a face, as if repelled. It wasn't clear if the face was intended for Willa Mott, or the girl she used to be. "When I got pregnant, I spent the first four months eating like crazy, thinking no one would notice I was carrying a baby, they'd just think I was fat. It wasn't the most inspired plan, I admit. By the time I accepted what was going on, there was nothing to do but carry the pregnancy to term."
"You look so different now." Tess was seeing the photograph again, the shapeless girl with the flash of camera caught in her myopic eyes.
"Not so different."
"You do. It's not just the weight. It's the glasses—"
"I wear contact lenses now. You've heard of them?"
"And the hair—those two little tails sticking straight out from your head, the ends looking as if someone chewed on them."
"Hey, not everyone can wear the same hairstyle for their entire life. As I said before, you haven't changed much. You have one of those faces that will never change. When you're fifty, people will be able to match you to that photograph. Is that something in the genes, you suppose, having a face that never changes?"
"I've never thought about it much, but I guess it is, at least on my mother's side. The Monaghans start out with these round little marshmallow faces that get sharper and frecklier every year. Not too long ago, I was walking downtown and someone I went to fourth grade with recognized me and said, ‘You haven't changed a bit.' I wasn't exactly flattered."
"You should be," Jackie said fervently. "To have that kind of continuity in your life, to have people know you that way—that's a wonderful thing."
"An interesting observation from a woman who changed her name, ran away from her family, and did everything she could, short of going to a plastic surgeon, to alter her appearance."
Jackie said nothing, just played with her empty glass, running her fingers over the painted surface.
"Ready to go?"
"Absolutely."
Outside, the night air was muggy, as if a storm might be near. Tess and Jackie were moving slowly up Collington Street, when a skeletal woman pushing a baby carriage approached them. Although the woman looked as if she hadn't eaten in weeks, the sleeping baby was pink-cheeked and healthy looking.
"Ladies, ladies, do you have any spare change tonight, ladies? My baby needs a prescription, and the food stamps are late this month, and the doctor says I have to start on this new medication, and my husband, he just wrote from Georgia that he can't find work—"
Jackie started to reach inside her purse, but Tess laid a hand gently on her wrist.
"We're down to living on plastic until our next pay day," she told the woman, politely but firmly. "Sorry."
The woman looked at them resentfully, muttered something under her breath, and pushed the stroller forward, accosting a group of people gathered on a stoop several houses down.
"She had a baby," Jackie said. "She's not some druggie or alcoholic trying to get money for a fix."
"It's not her baby and that's exactly what she is."
"How do you know that?"
"She's famous in the neighborhood. You see, she kept coming back. Some people tried to help her, get her a place to live. They found out that she volunteers to babysit when she's hard up, then wheels the baby around, using him as a prop to get mo
re contributions. One of the Blight's columnists wrote about her. The details give her away. Lies demand details, lots of them. People pay her to shut up as much as anything. She's one of the women who walk."
"Who?"
"The women who walk, the lost souls of Baltimore, the ones who talk to themselves and wander through the city. I see them on buses, down in the harbor, even up at the Rotunda shopping center. Some of them panhandle, some don't. Not that long ago, I used to worry I was going to become one of them."
"Bullshit," Jackie said softly.
"What?"
"I said bullshit. You were never really in danger of falling through the cracks like that. You have parents, family. There was always someone to catch you if you really fell."
Tess wanted to argue, but Jackie was right, she had caught her in her lie as surely as she had caught the woman with the stroller. Oh, she might have felt as if she were scraping bottom at times, but there had always been family to help her out. When she had lost her job, Aunt Kitty and Uncle Donald had rallied, finding work for her. And if she hadn't been so proud, her father would have squeezed her on the city payroll somehow.
"You're right, I was being glib. I always had support. I guess you really didn't."
"I had one person. Now I don't have anyone. I'm all I have."
Tess wanted to contradict her, say something soothing, but what was there to say in all honesty? Her mother was dead, her daughter was someone else's daughter. Jackie Weir was about as alone as anyone could be in this world.
Chapter 17
Tess yearned to go straight to Tyner's office the next morning, but it was her turn to take Gramma Weinstein to the hairdresser, one of Gramma's many codependent rituals. Unlike some older folks, who clung to the steering wheel long past the point of prudence, Gramma had announced on her sixtieth birthday that she would not drive any more. She had taken it for granted that her husband and, after his death, her children and grandchildren, would gladly pick up the chauffeuring duties.
But the rotation, as maintained by Gramma, was far from foolproof. Today, as Tess pulled into the parking lot behind Gramma's apartment building, she saw her mother getting out of her blue Saturn.
"Free at last," she said to herself. Now she could check in with Tyner, find out where things stood with Beale. But something in her mother's face kept her from throwing her car into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot. The tense lines on either side of her mouth, the anxious look in her eyes. She reminded Tess of herself, on her way to visit Judith.
"Hey, Mom. Looks like Gramma double-scheduled again. I thought it was my turn."
"Great. I had to take a personal day to get the morning off. Unlike you, I can't make my own hours. The federal government isn't quite so flexible."
"Nor is the state government, yet here comes Uncle Donald. Triple-teaming—that's a new one even for Gramma. Is she getting senile, or does she just not care what else we do with our lives?"
"Don't be disrespectful of your grandmother," Judith said automatically. "She won't be with us much longer."
"You wish," Tess said, and her mother looked stricken. By the joke, or the reality behind it? Impossible to tell.
Uncle Donald strolled up, whistling a show tune, "Younger Than Springtime." He was Gramma's favorite, if only because he had never married and his loyalties were clear. Even his fall from political grace, in the scandal that had sent his senator boss to prison, hadn't shaken Gramma's affection for him.
"Good morning, Sis, Tesser. How do you want to resolve this? We can toss a coin, or cut a deck of cards that I happen to have in my car. High card wins. Loser takes her to the Beauty Palace."
"I'll do it," Judith said. "I took the day off, I might as well."
A reprieve, Tess thought. Yet when she looked at her mother's dutiful, unhappy face, she couldn't just walk away.
"Let's all go. Make it a family outing. My mom and my favorite uncle. And Gramma," she added, when Judith gave her another look. "We could go to S'n'H afterwards, like we used to do with Poppa."
"Why not?" Uncle Donald replied.
"Why not?" Judith echoed weakly, but she looked as if she might have several reasons.
The Pikesville Beauty Palace sat in an old shopping center on Reisterstown Road, near the synagogues that had been built as Baltimore's Jewish families began moving to the north and west. Although the neighborhood was less and less safe as time went on, the Beauty Palace had scores of loyal customers like Gramma, who wouldn't dream of going anywhere else for their weekly sets and periodic root touchups.
"Mrs. Weinstein!" the receptionist said with the chirpy insincerity common to those who dealt with Gramma. "We're all ready to take you back to the shampoo girl."
"You didn't give me one of those Russians, did you? I hate it when they talk that gibberish around me."
"We have you with Lisa today."
"I've never had her. Isn't she the one who snaps her gum?"
"She won't," the receptionist said, her smile becoming more and more of an effort. "I'll speak to her about it."
"Why can't I have Wanda?"
"She's with another customer."
"Then put me with Francie. I always liked her."
"She left to work at a salon in Mount Washington."
"Probably running for her life," Tess said under her breath.
"Don't mutter," Gramma said. "If you have something to say, say it."
"Be nice, everyone," Judith pleaded. A whistling Uncle Donald wandered away, as if he didn't know this trio of querulous women, and developed a sudden fascination with the hair accessories in the display case by the front door.
"Let's just forget the whole thing," Gramma said suddenly. "I don't like the idea of someone new touching my head."
"But you've had Lisa," the receptionist said, a little desperately.
"Put me down for next Wednesday. And make a note: no Russians, no strangers, no gum-snappers. I want Wanda, you understand. Wanda for shampoo, Michael for my set. Donald, bring the car around. We'll just have an earlier lunch than we planned at S'n'H."
Uncle Donald jumped, as if he were a twelve-year-old boy again. Judith smiled feebly at the glaring receptionist, while Tess stared at the ceiling. One big happy, she thought.
Even with Gramma along, it was nice to be back at S'n'H, as the old-timers all referred to the Suburban House restaurant. S'n'H was a sanctuary, a windowless, timeless place with desserts to die for and placemats with supposed-to-be-funny Yiddish translations. Oivay, for example, was translated as April fifteen, a bris was "getting tipped off," and a goy was defined as one who buys retail.
Her breakfast long forgotten, Tess ordered chicken noodle soup with kreplach. ("Kosher-style ravioli," according to the menu.) Gramma decided on a potato pancake, while Uncle Donald chose cheese blintzes and a side order of herring. Judith wanted nothing more than an iced tea.
"That's right, Judith," Gramma said approvingly. "You'll keep your figure."
That was the cue for Uncle Donald, who acted as the peacemaker in those rare moments he realized there was peace to be made. "Has your lawyer finalized the division of that property yet, Mama? If you have any trouble with any of the government agencies involved, you just let me know."
"Not to worry, it's almost done. I'm having a crab feast next Wednesday night and we'll have a little celebration then, sign all the papers together." Even kosher Jews ate crabs in Baltimore, as if there were some unwritten exemption in the dietary laws. "That's why it's important for me to go back to the beauty parlor before then. Can you take me next week, Donald? I know how hard it is for you to get away from work." Not for Judith, Tess noted, who actually did work at work. Hard for Donald, who didn't really do anything.
"A crab feast in your apartment?" Judith asked. "But I crabs are so messy, Mama, you really need to do them outdoors, with picnic tables and newspaper."
"I know. I thought we'd do it at your place. You have such a nice yard. And if we do it outside, you won't have to clean. Work
ing as you do, I know it's hard for you to keep on top of the house cleaning."
Time for Tess to jump into the cross-hairs. Conversation with Gramma was a little like running through a sniper's alley, each family member taking a turn as the target.
"Did you subdivide the land so each one has his or her own parcel, or are you transferring the deed so we're all listed as the owners?"
"One piece, so it's all for one, one for all. My children and grandchildren are going to have to learn to get along eventually."
A new complaint. Hand it to Gramma—at an age where most people declined to take on anything different, she was always open to new grievances.
"We all get along okay," Tess said tentatively. Gramma was spoiling for a fight this morning. The skirmish at the Beauty Palace had only whetted her appetite.
"You're hard on Deborah, Theresa Esther. She thinks you don't respect her because she's just a full-time mother and you're Miss Big Britches Private Eye, getting written up in the newspaper."
"Did she say that?" Tess was surprised. She thought she and Deborah, intense competitors during childhood, had agreed to an adulthood truce. They may not approve of one another, but they didn't call attention to it.
"No, but I can tell. I have a sixth sense about these things."
"Right. And I bet you tell Deborah that I'm, I don't know, jealous of her because she has a husband and a baby, while I'm ‘just' a spinster with a struggling business. Does your sixth sense pick that up as well?"
"Mama, did you see Hecht's has a sale on the hose you like so much?" That was Judith, trying to get Gramma's scope trained on her and away from Tess. "Would you like me to pick some up for you this afternoon? As long as I've taken the day off, I might as well put it to good use."
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