He sits back, too, and shakes his head at me.
“I take your reaction as a positive indication that you’re at least thinking about it.”
“I’m thinking it’ll be tough to find a sick person who wants to fight this fight.”
“Well, I know where you can find a crazy one.” I smile.
“You?”
“I didn’t tell you. About Isabel—the reason George took her. She got hurt when I left to arrest Marble—I was tracking his Ventra card—but that’s a different story. The point is, I left Isabel with George and my Complete Care nurse. When I got back, Isabel had fallen down the front steps. She had a hematoma, lost a tooth. George and the nurse, they blamed me. Said I left the door open. I, of course, blamed George. But now I know it was the nurse who did it. She was told to stop me from investigating St. Claire, and she used Isabel to do it.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s about four other stories. I’ve got a bunch, Kanellis. Including one for the man who put me in here.”
“You know who it was?”
“I know a lot of things. And I want to tell them all. To you. And, you know, to a judge, if I have to.”
Andy looks at me. Sees I’m serious. “You want to testify?”
“I’m a victim of this scam, too. But I survived. And I want to give other Sacred Heart patients a reason to believe the world isn’t all that shitty, before they go.”
“That makes you the hero.” He looks down at his hands again. I wonder if he held his wife as she died.
“Please, Kanellis,” I say. “Donna was lucky. She had you. But she shouldn’t get to be the only one. These people need you.”
He’s quiet for a minute. Then he gets up and I don’t know what he’s going to do but I definitely don’t expect it when he hugs me.
And when he does, he says, “I think I’ll paint it blue.”
* * *
I’m picking at a dish of plasticky macaroni and cheese—I couldn’t very well send Andy off with a handful of leads and a request for lunch, too—when Weiss shows up. With flowers.
“Hey,” I say, mostly to the flowers, a pink bouquet of roses so huge I really should be dying.
“Delivery,” he says, “for Gina Simonetti?”
I play along. “That’s me.”
“Great. Where would you like them?”
“How about there in the window. If they’ll fit? They’re so … there are so many. I can’t imagine who sent them.”
“There’s a card,” he says, detaching a small envelope from the vase.
I open it up. At the top it says GET WELL in pink, curly letters. Beneath, in tiny, perfectly formed black block letters, there is a message:
HELTMAN SETTLED A CLASS-ACTION SUIT FOR SACRED HEART. HE WAS HIRED BY JAMES NOVAK, THE HOSPITAL’S CEO. GUESS WHAT? THEY’RE OLD COLLEGE PALS. AFTER THE SETTLEMENT, THE BOYS WENT INTO BUSINESS TOGETHER, NOVAK A SILENT PARTNER IN A COMPANY CALLED LEGACY INVESTMENTS AND MANAGEMENT, LLC. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF IT?
FEEL BETTER,
ROSALIND SANCHEZ
I put the card back in its envelope. “What a thoughtful girl.”
Weiss hands me a clipboard. “I just need your signature here.” It’s a delivery confirmation from Linda’s Flowers and Balloons.
I sign on the X. I can barely keep a straight face. “Your level of detail is impressive. Except that I should have mentioned that I hate flowers.”
Weiss looks over his shoulder like I’m blowing his cover. “Are you serious?”
“I am. Flowers die. Kind of a depressing gift for a patient, if you think about it.”
He looks like he may as well stand beside himself.
I give it up and smile. “I’m just giving you shit,” I say. “It’s a good disguise. But you don’t need it anymore. I’m off the case.”
“You were never on the case. You were never supposed to be, anyway.” As soon as he says it, he gets it: “There is a case, though. You’ve got enough to pass it up the chain.”
“I’m passing it over, really. To Kanellis.”
“What about you—your safety?”
“St. Claire died last night. That means I’ve no longer got a case. Anyway, I figured out who attacked me, and I’m certain he won’t try anything like that again.”
“I can’t believe it,” Weiss says. “I just spent an hour trying to get FTD-chic.” He sits on the daybed and inadvertently knocks into the roses, saving them just before they topple and meet an even earlier end. I’ve never seen him fumble.
“I appreciate the attempt,” I say.
“That get-well note took me some time, too, playing mental tennis with Sanchez like some wannabe shrink.”
I turn the card around in my hands. “It’s fucking great. We—I mean, Kanellis—can definitely use it.”
Weiss studies me sideways. “Are you faking me out?”
“No. I’m off the case.”
He tilts his head the other way.
“Look at me,” I say about my forehead.
“You don’t look so bad.”
For a moment, I wonder if those flowers are part of more than a disguise.
“Well,” I say, “I’m still off the case.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What everybody’s been telling me to do. Take some time. You know. Stop and, ah, smell the roses.”
Weiss stands up and carefully extracts a single rose from the stuffed-full vase. Then he turns, hands it to me, and says, “Let me be the first to say I think you’re full of shit. It’s cute, though.”
I take the flower and I’m speechless as I watch him walk out of the room.
Of course I blame the medication for the rush of blood to my head.
* * *
Later, after Dr. Tacker comes by with plans to discharge me in the morning, I close my eyes, and for the first time in weeks I fall asleep without feeling like I’m actually falling from something. Of course, I do take the meds they give me, and I do stay in bed.
When I wake up in the morning, I find I slept through a bunch of calls. From Metzler. From Walter. From Maricarmen. And from an unknown number. I listen to the messages. I listen to this one twice:
“Gina, it’s George. I just wanted to call and say … uh … I appreciate your apology. Saying it that way probably makes it pretty obvious that Rick put me up to this, but I guess he’s right. We both need to come clean. Or, I don’t know, we have to be better. But you don’t have to be better than me. Anyway. Isabel, she misses you. I, uh, it isn’t easy. But we’re making our way. I guess that’s all. Oh, and I’m sorry. Goodbye.”
I call the number back and nobody answers but then a voice mail clicks on to say, “You’ve reached the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Our office is currently closed.…”
There is a God.
I hang up as yet another nurse appears with my six A.M. pills. She says, “This is your last dose before you’re headed home. They’ll probably get you out of here after breakfast. Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t need anything else at all.”
32
The first thing I do when I get home from the hospital is take a shower. The second thing I do is look for George.
I call the Catholic Charities number again, this time during business hours.
“I’m trying to locate my brother, George Simonetti.”
“Is he an employee?” asks the woman on the other end.
“No. I think he’s maybe staying there? With his child?”
“He’s not staying here. This is the main intake facility. Spell the last name?”
I spell it. I wait.
“He’s in the system,” she says. “Try this number.”
I try it.
“Foourrr-ty-five hundred,” answers a man, like an auctioneer.
“I’m looking for my brother, George Simonetti.”
“Hang on.”
I do.
> “He’s out on the trucks. You want to leave a message?”
“No—I’m sorry—I was given this number by the Catholic Charities, I’m not sure what it is you do.”
“We’re the produce warehouse for the W-I-C.”
I don’t know what that means, entirely, but what I really want to know is, “Where, exactly, are you located?”
He tells me.
I go.
* * *
It’s just before five when I park around the corner from a flat, unmarked building that runs the length of three city blocks. In the front, on the other side of a chain-link fence, a parking lot full of workers’ cars runs up to a series of red garage doors that must be where the trucks load. All of the trucks are empty. All the doors are closed.
I walk along the fence until I come to a driveway; there, a sign reads CHICAGO CATHOLIC CHARITIES WIC WAREHOUSE.
Just like the man said.
I find the entrance.
Inside, there’s a counter that fronts a half wall constructed to serve as a welcome desk. Or, judging by the surly foreman behind the counter, a bitching box.
He puts down the yellow slip of paper he’d been concerned with and raises his eyebrows up over his glasses. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for my brother. George Simonetti.”
“Just started, yeah?”
“I think so.”
He rifles through a stack of other yellow slips and finds the one, apparently, that gives him the information he needs. He picks up a nearby headset and, without putting it on says, into its microphone, “One-five-nine. Front desk.”
I’m reminded of the Wizard of Oz, the way his voice echoes over the warehouse speakers. And then, of course, I’m reminded of Isabel. I’d hoped we’d watch the movie together someday; I know she’d love the big adventure anchored by the desire to return home. And also the Technicolor.
“You can wait there,” the foreman says, about the folding chairs along the wall.
I sit.
While I wait, I hear the once-familiar end-of-shift geniality rising in the voices of the workmen over the wall. I’d forgotten that feeling—the satisfaction of a good day on the Job. I’d become too focused on trying to get going, too worried about running late, too driven by the toddler tears caused by my absence.
Then again, before Isabel and after, I was rarely satisfied. I should probably admit that might have something to do with me.
When George appears, he looks tired—good-tired. He rolls up the sleeves of his stained uniform and when he sees me, he tugs at his hair.
“Gina? How did you find me?”
I’m a cop, dummy, is what I think—but I also think of his last message, my constant need to be better than him. So I stand up and I feel like I’m sticking my neck out when I say, “I wanted to see you.”
He offers a hand instead of a hug and sits me down again. He smells like motor oil and tomato juice. “How are you feeling?”
“Shitty,” I say, because I’m not fine, and I’m done using that go-to.
“Rick said you got hurt pretty bad.”
“I’d have been fine if I followed hospital protocol and stayed in bed for a week.”
“Are you kidding? You couldn’t stay put anywhere for a day, even. Your head would explode.”
“Speaking of. You think we could take a walk?”
George gets up and holds the door.
“I start physical therapy on Friday,” I say, once outside. “And medication.”
He squints in the sun. “That’s good to hear.”
“What about you? I don’t mean that—I mean, I’m not talking about medication—I mean, well—this job?” I’m trying to be casual. I’m terrible at it.
“It’s good,” he says. “I load food onto a truck, I take the truck out to a site and unload it again.”
We turn the corner and walk up the street, away from the Chicago Avenue rush.
He says, “The food is for low-income women and children. So far, it feels good and bad, you know? To be there to help, but to be around people who need a hell of a lot more than a bag of apples.”
“Sounds all too familiar.”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course it does.”
“I’m talking about my job, Georgie. I’m supposed to help solve problems most people don’t want solved.”
“You’re talking about me, too. It’s okay. I get your frustration.” He looks down at his feet, scuffs along the sidewalk in front of us as we walk. “I’m sorry about that other job. I know you tried to get me set up, and I was grateful. But I just can’t take any more handouts from you.”
I play dumb. I want details. “What job?”
“The guy you got Lidia to introduce me to. The dump-truck guy. The thing is? I’d been clean for a while. I wasn’t even worried about the drug test. I couldn’t fucking believe it when they called me in about the results. I knew you were going to be mad. And I was mad. Because even before the stupid test—before the job—I didn’t want your help. So I bailed.”
I can’t believe it: of all people, George was the one who didn’t get conned. Still, “I didn’t have anything to do with that job, George.”
“Lidia said you’d say that.” He stops. Stops me. Turns to me. “You know what happened from there. I was a fucking idiot, and I’m sorry. I let Soleil talk me into what I thought I deserved. It wasn’t until we were all three together, Soleil and Bell and me, that I realized Soleil didn’t want Bell, and she only wanted me because she didn’t want you to have me and her ex, too. Anyway. I’m sorry for the way I handled it, you know, taking Bell when I was high. I was pissed at you, though, you know? For lying to me about something real serious. Something that could affect all of us.”
“It was just a rough case.”
“I’m talking about your disease, Gina.”
“You do know the chances of me not walking tomorrow because of MS are equal to that of me not walking tomorrow because I get struck by lightning. Standing here. Right here. Right now.” I start walking again.
He follows.
We walk for a while.
“I miss her,” I say.
“I know you do. But I think you also miss having someone to worry about. So that you don’t have to worry about yourself.”
“I worry about both of you. I always will.”
“We’re doing good, Gina. I got her into this kids’ development center? It’s basically daycare, but through the archdiocese—and it’s only been a few days, I know, but she really seems to like it.” George checks his watch. Dad’s watch. “Speaking of, I’d better get back. I’ve got to get the bus.”
We turn and approach Chicago Avenue again. It’s a beautiful afternoon; a perfect day for the playground.
“Where are you living, George?”
“Place called Madonna House. My priest gave me the referral; it’s actually really nice. It’s for families who, you know, need a home—”
“You have a home.”
“It’s only temporary, until I get some money saved—”
“You could stay at my place and save money. It’s home to Isabel, right? And it’d be a favor to me, really…”
He doesn’t answer. He won’t say yes and he can’t say no.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just want to help you.”
I follow him to the corner as the sixty-six eastbound approaches, a hot-road mirage glaring in its wake.
George takes a Ventra card from his wallet. He says, “Gina. You can’t work out your own life if I dump mine on you. Like I said, we’ve both got to come clean.”
As the bus slows to its stop, George starts across the street, then thinks again and comes back to give me a hug. I hold on to him.
He says, “We’re going to be okay. Really. All of us.”
He flags the bus and makes a run for it. Just before he boards, he stops to shout, “You’re thanking God, G! I know it!”
I resist giving him the finger and instead wave goodbye; it’s a
bout time he had one up on me.
It’s also about time I take his advice.
33
After several days of rain, the storms quit just before I reach Eden Cemetery in Schiller Park. The clouds sit low, now, blanketing the air traffic noise in and out of O’Hare. I drive past a sign that says I’m entering a place Where Memories Rest with Dignity.
I hope there’ll be some dignity for Kay St. Claire.
I park behind a string of cars, get out, and button my pants. They were the most appropriate pair I could manage for the occasion—black and hemmed short enough to wear with flats. Yes, I’ve finally given in: fucking flats.
And good thing: had I worn heels I’d be poking holes in the wet grass all the way to the gravesite.
When I get there it seems I’m late. I got wind of the proceedings from Andy, who thought I might want to attend. He told me ten o’clock, but it’s barely past ten, and save for two of Christina’s boys who are chasing each other across the grounds, the group is already huddled around the plot.
I edge around a big old elm tree and stand beneath its branches next to three older women, two of them sharing a large black umbrella and the one closest to me protecting her beauty-shop blow-dry under a plastic scarf. In front of us, twenty or so other mourners stand in a circle, heads bowed, while a man, presumably whoever’s running the religious portion of the show, reads from the Bible.
“I can’t hear him, can you?” one of the women under the umbrella whispers.
“It’s Corinthians,” I tell them—though I’m totally guessing—I wouldn’t know an old testament from a new one.
“Oh, death, where is your sting?” she says. “I’d say it’s stinging Christina right about now, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” asks the woman next to her. She doesn’t whisper, and catches the ire-eye of the gentleman in front of her.
“I heard,” the other whispers, “all Kay’s bank accounts were frozen in the investigation.”
Partially true, I want to tell them, but—
“I heard the money’s gone,” says the woman in the plastic headdress. “Christina had to pay for all this.”
“All what?” says the woman on the right; she either doesn’t see the gentleman’s backward glance or doesn’t give a shit. “No proper church service, one measly spray of flowers, a pine box—”
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