“B and B?”
“Short for Brooklyn-Bronx. They say if you’re born in either of those boroughs you never really leave. You never go any farther than the subway can take you. Even the Long Island Railroad—the way a lot of people in my neighborhood talk, you’d think it was the Orient Express.”
Max smiled. “And what about you?”
A green and white sign reading NEW PALTZ 38 mi. flashed by on the right. They had climbed a low rise, and forests graying with the dusk spread out before them.
“I’ve been making believe this is my car—forget about possible defects for now—and I’m on my way to ... wait a minute, one second ... oh, I know ... to this fabulous resort in the Catskills. I’m a famous actress, and sinfully rich, and ... and I’m meeting my secret lover there for a weekend of mad frivolity. I picked that expression up from a book, mad frivolity. It sounds like something Clark Gable and Carole Lombard would do, doesn’t it?”
“You’re right, it does. You like old movies?”
She glanced into the rearview mirror, then zipped left into the fast lane, passing a blue Buick and a yellow Opel Kadet, the last rays of the setting sun skating sideways across the sleek red hood. The speedometer jumped over the eighty hash mark. Just ahead lay a straight patch with no exit ramp in sight and, miraculously, no traffic.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “People will think I’m weird, but [201] the truth is, I don’t much like anything that was made after 1940. Remember the old Shirley Temple movies—she danced with Bill Robinson in every one. And Nelson Eddie and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta. I even cried at the end of Now, Voyager. You know, when Bette Davis says, ‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.’ Or was it the other way around?”
Max looked at her, amused and a little surprised. This was the most she’d said all in one breath since she’d first come to work for him, two years ago. It seemed they’d both fallen under this sportscar’s spell.
“I don’t remember,” he said and laughed. “Just the two cigarettes. Paul kept lighting up for him and Bette in nearly every scene. I suppose the Hays office thought lung cancer was preferable to passionate kissing.”
“Spoken like a cynic. You’ve just given yourself away, you know. I’m like that too. I tend to dwell on—am I going too fast for you? You look a little green.”
“No,” he lied. He was beginning to feel pretty soggy in the armpits. Jesus. They were really moving. And how experienced a driver was she, anyhow?
A picture flashed across his mind of Quent Jorgensen. In an exhibit he had prepared for the trial, Jorgensen’s lawyer had cleverly juxtaposed a photo of his client in midair clearing a hurdle at the Olympics with a later shot of the now-crippled man slumped in his wheelchair. While Max had every reason to expect the judge would keep the photo from the jury, he nevertheless found himself hoping fervently that the alcohol found in his bloodstream after the accident meant that he had been out of control.
She glanced at the speedometer. “I suppose this is what you’d call malum prohibitum.”
“Breaking the law without evil intent,” Max interpreted. “Yes, I think speeding would fall under that heading. That’s if you get pulled over. Under different circumstances, a doctor might have another term for it.”
“What’s that?”
“D.O.A. Look, maybe you had better slow down a bit. And what’s with the legalese anyway?”
“I have a confession to make. I’ve been taking home a few of [202] your law books.” She glanced over at him, as if expecting him to be angry. “Only one at a time, and I always bring them back. I’m very careful. Honest.”
She was blushing again. So he had been right about her having more than a passing interest in law. “I don’t mind. But you may be opening a Pandora’s box. Is that really what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said. Her eyes clouded over. “I used to think ... oh, never mind, I’ve probably said too much as it is.”
“No. Please. I ...” He couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like a line from a bad movie, so he ended lamely with “Maybe I can help.”
She bit her lip, as if to keep from crying. “No, I don’t think so. It’s ... sort of personal.”
“As in ‘boyfriend’?”
The burnt-sienna flush in her cheeks deepened, and Max felt a prick of jealousy which was completely unreasonable. Right again. You’re a regular two-gun Sam, old boy.
“He’s in the army. In Vietnam for almost four months. Three months and twenty-one days. I ... we, that is ... plan to get married when he gets home. But the thing is ... .” Her voice rose on a sharp tinny note, then cracked. “Oh God, I knew this would happen, I always cry when I talk about him. ...” She brushed angrily at her eyes with the heel of her left hand. “You see, I haven’t heard from him in a while. Three months, to be exact. Only one letter ...” She sounded as if she might start to cry again.
“You really love him, don’t you?” Dumb question. That much was obvious. And what of it? Just because he didn’t exactly have the market cornered on marital bliss didn’t mean it was a lost cause for everyone else.
She nodded, not taking her eyes from the road. There was a hurt, angry look in them now, and a new pinched hardness to her mouth. He saw the muscles in her calf tense as her foot eased imperceptibly downward on the gas pedal. The roar of the engine turned to a high-pitched whine reminiscent of a jet airliner taxiing out for takeoff.
Then she said: “I would die without him. I know that’s an expression they use a lot in movies. But I mean it. Literally. Did you ever love anyone that much?”
[203] Max thought of Bernice. No. Even when they were first married he couldn’t honestly say he had loved her enough to die for her.
He stared at this dark windblown young woman by his side. That deep and secret intensity he had sensed on other occasions now stood revealed to him, like a deer frozen on the edge of a clearing, and he was afraid that if he made any sudden moves, or spoke too quickly, it would be gone.
And then something happened. He could see somehow through the ruby-dark prism she held up to him. Suddenly he could imagine what it might be like to love a woman enough to die for her.
Max found himself envying this man, whoever he was.
“I feel that way about my daughter,” he said. “When we first brought her home from the hospital, I remember standing over her crib thinking for the first time, yes, a reasonable man could commit murder. If anyone ever tried to hurt Mandy, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.”
“She’s lucky she has you.” Rose was silent a moment; there was just the high whine of the accelerating engine. “I never knew my father. My mother either. She died in a hospital fire the night I was born. How’s that for cinematic?” Her voice held a bitter twist.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t remember any of it. I got the whole lurid story later on. About how I was carried down by one of the nurses, wrapped in a wet blanket. And how my grandmother came to get me—my father was overseas at the time—and she thought there had to have been some mistake. You see, I didn’t look like my two sisters, or either of my parents. But I was the last one, you see. All the other babies had been claimed. Do you think my mother would have wanted me if she’d lived?” Rose clapped a hand over her mouth. “God, did I really say that? I can’t believe the things I’m telling you.”
“It’s all right. I’m a good listener. Go ahead.”
“The rest is pretty boring. You wouldn’t want to hear it.” The line of her mouth grew even harder. “I saw this old Tarzan movie once, and there was this scene where Johnny Weismuller gets stuck in quicksand—in fact, I think he got stuck in quicksand in every picture—but as corny as it was, I knew exactly how he felt. What it was like to be trapped, slowly sinking down, and the harder you struggle to get out, the worse it gets.”
[204] The needle had crept up past eighty-five and was hovering somewhere near ninety now. The noise of the engine
a shrill whine.
“Do you know what that’s like?” she said loudly.
“Yes, I know.” He thought of Bernice, and it gave him a kind of perverse pleasure imagining what his wife’s reaction would be to this little escapade of his. “Rose, I think you really had better slow down.”
“What about Quent Jorgensen?”
“I suppose killing ourselves might help his case in the end, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I mean, don’t you want to find out if—” Abruptly she tensed, leaning forward slightly, her fingers locking about the shiny red steering wheel, knuckles showing white.
“What’s wrong?” Max could feel himself go suddenly tight all over, as if his skin had shrunk several sizes.
“Holy Mother of God,” she swore. “It’s stuck. I can’t ...” She struggled with the wheel, which appeared to be locked, with only an inch or two give in either direction.
That’s when Max saw it. The curve ahead. And the glut of slow-moving traffic just beyond. Rose had taken her foot off the gas, and was now pressing down on the brake, down-shifting into low gear. Her whole body rigid, face white as library paste.
Christ. She was panicking, braking too hard.
There was a horrible squeal, the stink of burning rubber, and the back end fishtailed out into a spin that sent them skidding across two lanes. The guard rail loomed, with a straight drop below. Fear struck like a sandbag hurled at his chest.
“Jesus Chri—”
The instant seemed to hang in space, irrelevant to anything past or future; there was only that looming white guard rail and rocky slope beyond, the endless shrieking of the tires.
And now Rose, a wild woman he scarcely recognized, eyes huge and black as the hot-top racing at them, let loose a high, primal yell as she fought for control.
Max was thrown forward against the dash, his forehead thumping painfully against the strip of chrome alongside the windshield. An explosion of white like a flashbulb popping behind his eyes, then a moment when his senses went skidding over the edge of some abyss.
[205] Through the ringing in his ears, he thought he heard her cry out someone’s name. It sounded like “Brian.”
Now his head was clearing, and he watched Rose throw her weight against the steering wheel with every bit of strength she possessed. Then a muted noise like the tumblers inside a balky lock clicking home.
And suddenly the steering wheel was turning, Rose in control again, easing the car around, pulling off onto the shoulder, and finally, blessedly, jerking to a stop.
Max opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. He could only stare at this woman beside him, this good Catholic girl turned madwoman, her dark hair matted and tumbled about her shoulders, her blouse untucked from the waistband of her skirt, her face stamped with the high fevered color of an adrenaline rush. He was too shaken, too overwhelmed.
“My God,” he finally choked. “My God, Rose. When did you learn to drive like that?”
“I didn’t know I could,” she said, expelling her breath in a short explosive laugh even as tears of stunned relief filled her eyes. “You see, I just got my license a couple of months ago.”
Chapter 11
It was the ugliest shiner Rose could ever remember seeing, more black than blue, and puffed up almost the size of the eight ball they used to play with when they were kids, the one that told your fortune different ways depending how it was turned.
Now Rose needed no fortune-telling to read what had happened to her sister. Rose stood in the shabby hallway outside Marie’s apartment and stared at the black eye peering over the door chain, anger rising in her.
“Marie, my God, your eye.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Alfred Hitchcock, he’d like me to star in his next movie.” Marie gave a dry bark of a laugh as she unlatched the chain and opened the door the rest of the way to let Rose in. Even in the dim foyer, Rose could see that her sister was nothing but skin and bones under a faded duster stained with baby food, her unwashed hair pasted to her skull. “Dumbest thing you ever saw. I walked into a door. Do you believe it?”
No, Rose wanted to say, I don’t. Last time, what had it been? The stairs. Marie said she’d broken her arm falling down the stairs. And the time before that, she’d slipped on a Matchbox car and somehow broken her nose and knocked a tooth out. And, sure, it was just a coincidence that each of those times Pete had been home, and out of work.
But Rose kept her thoughts to herself. There was a hands-off look in Marie’s good eye, a look that warned, It’s my business if my old man beats on me, so keep your sympathy to yourself.
She followed Marie into the living room, a cramped boxlike space with flaky plaster walls and the temporary look of a seedy motel room. Pete was slouched in front of the television, his fist wrapped about a can of Budweiser. Bobby and Missy were playing on the floor by the radiator.
[207] “Is that why you called?” Rose asked, instinctively reaching up to console her sister, then letting her hand fall uselessly to her side as Marie moved a bare, almost imperceptible fraction backwards.
“This?” Marie touched her eye, wincing a little. “No big deal. I can take care of myself. Hey, you want a cup of coffee or something? I’d ask you to stay for dinner, but it’s not exactly the Waldorf. Beans and franks.”
Pete glanced up from “The Flintstones.” “Again? Christ, Marie. You know they give me gas. Hell, I could open up my own Mobil station with all the gas you give me.” He chortled at his own joke, then called out, “Be my guest, Rose. I’m going out anyway. I’ll grab a bite down at Tony’s.” Tony’s was the local beer joint.
Marie shot him a dark look, then bent to scoop up the baby. Little Gabe was howling, head thrown back, mouth open so wide Rose could see not only his four little teeth and glistening gums, but all the way back to his tonsils.
“What did you do to him?” Marie snapped at Bobby, now innocently absorbed in unraveling a long curly strand from the olive-colored carpet where it had come untacked from the floor.
Bobby stuck out his lower lip. “He hit me first. Hard, too. With his bottle.”
“I’ll hit you, next time,” Marie said. “He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Bobby shot Gabe a murderous look, and went back to his unraveling. He had dark hair like his father, and small, angry eyes.
Rose went over, and hunkered down next to him. “Hey, Bobby. I brought you something.”
She fished a tiny paper umbrella from the pocket of her raincoat, the kind Polynesian restaurants put into mixed drinks. Mr. Griffin had brought it back from a lunch at Trader Vic’s. For luck, he’d said with a grin, dropping it on her desk.
And then he’d told her about his friend Sam Blankenship and the Phipps Foundation, the possibility of a scholarship for college and maybe for law school too if she wanted to go that far. What a dear man Mr. Griffin was. Holy Mother, wouldn’t that be something, studying philosophy and Shakespeare, and learning French maybe ... though God knows where she’d ever use French. Still, how wonderful if she could. ...
[208] But then her bright fantasy faded.
What difference would any of it make without Brian?
Four months, dear God, and not one letter. Could he have forgotten me? Has he stopped caring?
No, not true, she would not let herself believe that. There had to be an explanation. Rose swallowed hard against the tight, aching knot in her throat. No more tears, she told herself. You’ve cried enough. Any more and you’ll be running into a serious salt deficiency.
Bobby was staring at the little umbrella suspiciously. “Does Gabe and Missy get one, too?”
“Just you,” she said. “But don’t tell. It’s our secret.”
He smiled then, like the sun breaking through a bank of thunderclouds. And Rose felt her heart lift a little.
“You’d make a good mother,” Marie said as they were sitting at the yellow Formica table in the kitchen, drinking their coffee. She sounded wistful,
Rose thought. As if she didn’t quite believe in such a thing, as if good mothers were like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.
“Why not? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. I could give them all a try.”
Rose again thought of Max—he had insisted she call him Max, not Mr. Griffin (it seemed a little silly, he’d said, after they’d come so close to getting killed together). She’d been worried when he summoned her into his office the following morning—after all, it had been her bright idea to take the Cyclone for a spin. But he hadn’t said one word about it. Instead he told her he might have a bit of a surprise for her after lunch. And that afternoon, when he told her about the possibility of a scholarship, Rose had been so overwhelmed she hadn’t been able to say a word except “Thank you.”
She told Marie about it, trying to keep the great excitement she felt out of her voice.
So fierce was the expression that then came over Marie’s battered face that Rose was stunned. Her sister’s mouth trembled, and the slit where her left eye peeked through the ghastly swollen flesh glittered like stainless steel.
“Do it,” she hissed, leaning forward, her thin hands clutched about the coffee mug set before her. “For Jesus’ fucking sake, Rose, a chance like this won’t ever come again. College. I wish to God I had that chance. Don’t waste it like I did, Rose. Don’t do anything stupid.”
[209] A tear formed on the pale blue of her sister’s good eye. A hard tear like ice that didn’t fall. Rose felt a wave of sorrow for her sister, trapped in this apartment, this kitchen littered with dirty dishes and toast crumbs, the only dream within Marie’s reach the marked-up Help Wanted columns of the Times folded out on the table next to a Bic banana.
“Nothing’s for certain yet,” she said. “Mr. Griffin—Max, I mean—just had lunch with this man. It probably won’t amount to anything. Besides, I’d still have to work at least part time, and if I did that, plus school, who would look after Nonnie?”
Marie slumped back in her chair, eyes dull, as if the effort of thinking back over her own missed chances had drained her. In a bitter voice, she said, “You asked me why I called? Well, maybe when I tell you, you’ll think twice about wasting your life playing Florence Nightingale to our dear Nonnie.”
Garden of Lies Page 24