by Lee Harris
We kept talking after the food was gone and the coffee had been poured several times. Finally we left the restaurant and walked along a stretch of the Sound. It was a warm, clear night. Jack took my arm. He told me he was starting law school in the fall, again by taking night classes. It would take years—four anyway—but he didn’t care. It was another step forward, and he was a man who didn’t stay in one place very long.
He moved his hand up and down my arm, a nice feeling, a man touching me because I was a woman. I knew that men and women slept together on first encounters, that they slept together once and went their separate ways, and I wondered how women could bear such burdens. I liked this man, and I could not imagine joining my body with his and never seeing him again.
What I felt was an eagerness to be near him, a sense that this was something good that I had missed in my life. I am not a person with regrets for things done or not done. I feel sadness at some things that have happened—I wish my mother had lived longer—but I have never felt that a decision made thoughtfully should be discarded loosely and later disparaged. I spent fifteen good and useful years at St. Stephens, but tonight I was happy to be where I was, doing what I was doing.
When we got back to my house, he walked me to the door and said nice things to me. It wasn’t hard to say them back to him. When the door was unlocked and pushed open, he stepped inside and kissed me. I suppose if you’re fourteen or sixteen when that happens, you may one day forget the sensation and the feelings evoked. I know I never will. Whichever way my life takes me from here, I will remember that moment, that kiss, that very wonderful man.
I slept till eight and woke up happy.
19
St. Stephen’s is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I say that unequivocally, having seen almost nothing else of the world. But those heavy, somber old buildings, the vast green meadows, the trees of immense girth that, as striplings, saw settlers sail up the Hudson, make that enclave more beautiful than anything I have seen to date.
I arrived well before the dinner hour to give me time to visit the villa. The villa is home to old and infirm nuns who need care but not hospitalization. At least one of the residents was already there when I entered St. Stephen’s, but I had a special friend I particularly wanted to see today.
I parked the car and walked along the flagstone path, bypassing the front door and rounding the corner of the building. Sister Benedict was sitting in a shaded spot near the back entrance. She saw me coming and fixed her eyes on me. Before I left the convent, she had celebrated her eightieth birthday. She lives in the villa because arthritis has twisted her hands and made her body painful.
“I knew you’d come back,” she called as I approached. “Where are you staying?”
“I’m just visiting Sister Joseph today, to talk about something.”
“If you can’t live without us, why don’t you try to live with us again?”
I pulled a chair over and sat beside her. “You’re looking quite merry,” I said, ignoring her question.
“And feeling so. What about you? How’s that little house of yours in Oakville or Briarwood or whatever they name those towns?”
“Oakwood. It’s a wonderful house. I mowed the lawn this week for the first time.”
“They’ll run you out of town if you don’t keep it nice.”
“That’s why I mowed.” I looked around. “Is everyone away on vacation? It seems so empty.”
“They’re here and there. Fourth of July is this week. How are you keeping yourself?”
“I’m getting ready to teach a course this fall on Poetry and the Contemporary American Woman.”
“What do you know about her?”
“I am one,” I said, thinking that last night had been an entering point.
“You look like one,” Sister Benedict said. She smiled and pulled my hand onto her lap with her own two gnarled ones. “You look happy.”
“I am.”
“Then you did the right thing.”
“Thank you.”
We chatted for a while and then I excused myself and walked to the chapel. Two novices crossed my path, walking with their eyes down and their hands crossed in their sleeves. Seeing them brought back old memories.
The chapel was empty and cool. I lit three candles, then walked down to the altar, looking at the interior as a visitor might. I recognized the altar cloths as the work of Sister Grace, the most talented embroiderer in the order. I remember when, as a novice, it had been my charge to wash, starch, and iron those beautiful cloths, and then roll them up in cylinders to avoid folds. It was a task that I had enjoyed, one of those mindless things we do that leave our brains free to think of other things.
From the chapel I went to the community room in the Mother House. Several nuns were sitting around, waiting for dinner. I heard someone say, “Kix!” and I went to say a warm hello. At five to twelve we started for the dining room, I the only one in street dress. I was surrounded by the brown Franciscan habit.
The nuns went first to their respective drawers and took out their napkin rings. It was Sunday and they would have fresh napkins today, which they would replace in their drawers after dinner. Those drawers were also where we found our mail each afternoon, where messages were left for us. I wondered who would inherit my drawer.
Mother Joseph met me in the dining room, and we sat down and ate an excellent Italian meal cooked by a nun from an Italian family. I had never learned much about cooking and always enjoyed these special meals.
When dinner was over, I spent a few minutes greeting the nuns I had not seen earlier, and then Joseph and I went up to her office.
Her office was on the second floor, where the ceiling sloped down to meet the outside wall. She had a desk that was as messy as her mind was clear. A long conference-style table served as an overflow for her papers. As she tidied a place for us, I went to the window facing west and looked out between two huge trees, straining to see the mythical view of the Hudson, but it was not there.
“Come and sit down,” Joseph said, “and let’s hear what you have to say.”
It took the better part of an hour for me to explain the facts of the murder and to detail everything I had learned in ten days of asking questions. Joseph listened, asking few questions, writing down names here and there on a blank sheet of unlined paper in an order that made no apparent sense to me. When I was finished, she looked up. Her face, framed in the veil, had the same calm look of self-assurance that I had admired when I first met her. She looked reflective for a moment, and then she slowly began shaking her head.
“There may be an answer in these people you’ve been talking to,” she said finally, “but there may not. What interests me most is the twins. Where did their gifts go between Good Friday morning and Easter Sunday?”
“They were traumatized,” I said, hearing myself use the word yet another time and feeling oddly embarrassed by it.
“They were separated.”
“The psychiatrist said—”
Joseph raised her hand. “Wait. These tricks they performed, did they do them separately or together?”
“I don’t really know. I was told they were being studied because it was so unusual to find twin savants.”
“And since that incident, they’ve never been together, have they?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The police wouldn’t have let them stay together. They might have made up a story to protect themselves. At least, that’s how the police would see it.”
“Probably.”
“And nothing has shaken their silence in forty years.” She closed her eyes a moment. “You said they had deteriorated.”
“Besides losing their special gifts, they no longer speak very much, they can’t tie their shoelaces anymore, they even have difficulty following simple instructions.”
“Both of them.”
“I’ve seen only one, but I’m told the other twin, Robert, behaves very similarly.”
; “It really fits quite nicely.” Joseph smiled.
“You see something, don’t you?”
“Something remarkable and wonderful. These are not twins, Christine. These are not two separate men born to the same mother at the same time with the same genetic history. These two gifted creatures are halves of one whole person whose development went awry, for reasons only God can explain. When they’re together, they function as near to a whole as they are able. When they’re apart, they scarcely function at all.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“They need each other the way your heart needs your brain, the way each part of your body needs every other part to function fully. Without each other, the twins merely survive. They breathe, they eat, they digest food. With each other, the organism is complete. It works. Together they are a savant.”
I took a moment to see the picture she was drawing, two beings whose sum was a thousand times more than its parts. It was a wild, almost crazy theory, proposed by the sanest human being I had ever known. “You mean that if the police had questioned them together—”
“Which they would never have done.”
“—they would have told the truth.”
“Quite possibly. If they were there to see what happened.”
“And if they weren’t,” I said, filling in the theoretical gaps, “they would at least know who it was who came into the apartment that day.”
“Very likely.”
My head was suddenly buzzing with possibilities. “Then the key to all this is to bring them together.”
“It may be too late, you know. The organism may have atrophied.”
“It can’t be.” I looked across the table at her sheet of paper with its odd notations. It still made no sense to me, but what she had said did. “It’s all there, Joseph, everything that ever happened to them, stored away in their minds, and if you’re right, all we need to get it out is that key, putting them together.”
“What will you do?”
I glanced at my watch. “I’ll call Mrs. McAlpin as soon as I get home and see if she can work something out. And then I want to see if there was any time after the police arrived at that apartment when the twins were together.”
“You will let me know how it all works out.”
“Oh, yes.” I stood and walked around the table to where she stood. “The moment I know. I’ll come back and tell you.”
“Good. That will mean a great deal to me.”
—
I knew she was right. A good theory explains all the known facts and can be used to predict future occurrences. The twins had performed their “tricks,” as Joseph put it, the morning of Good Friday when they were together with Magda. When Magda arrived at the Talley apartment and found Mrs. Talley dead, she put one twin in the bedroom so she could think about what to do. And when the police came, they naturally kept them apart for the reason Joseph had assumed. They’d have to be crazy to allow two suspected murderers to be together, giving them the opportunity to get their story straight.
All the way home to Oakwood, I turned Joseph’s theory over and over, finding no flaws and seeing only great promise. When I turned into my driveway an hour or so later, I noticed something on my front doorstep, and after I parked the car, I walked around to the front door to see what it was. To my surprise and delight, it was a small peach tree, balled and bagged, with a note. I opened the door, brought the tree inside, and read: “We’ve knocked on your door a hundred times, but you’re always out. Welcome to Oakwood. The McGuires (606) Midge, Don, Bobby, and Teri.”
Number 606 was next door to the left, facing my house. I took the tree and put it outside my back door. The burlap bag felt damp, so I guessed I’d be able to leave it there long enough to make some phone calls, one of them to the McGuires.
My first call was to Greenwillow. Virginia McAlpin was, of course, not there, but I persuaded the person who answered to give me her home number. I dialed, and she picked up the phone.
“Virginia,” I said, abandoning stuffy formality, “this is Chris Bennett. I have something to tell you.”
I went on to describe Joseph’s theory. Then I said, “It’s very important to get the twins together. Can you arrange for me to bring Robert to Greenwillow?”
“I don’t see why not,” she said. “The release didn’t contain any restrictions. I’ll call my counterpart in Buffalo tomorrow. How soon would you be able to go?”
“I’ll pack a bag and have it waiting.”
“This is really quite amazing, isn’t it? I should think Dr. Sanderson would be most interested.”
“Let’s not call in the medical community quite yet,” I said. “We don’t know anything for certain, and our first priority is to find out who killed Mrs. Talley.”
“You’re right. We’ll keep this quiet till we’ve taken care of our immediate concern.”
I hoped she meant it. The last thing the Talley twins and I needed was to be descended upon by a gaggle of psychiatrists.
Naturally, I wanted to call Jack. I couldn’t, because it was Sunday and I didn’t have his home number. But even if I had, I wonder if I would have used it. Our relationship had changed last night from mostly business to the man-woman kind, and the change had made me hesitant about calling, even on a business matter.
So I called the McGuires and thanked them for the tree and accepted their invitation to Sunday supper at six, about half an hour from now.
But first, I had a very pleasurable job to do. I changed into sneakers, found a spade and a bag half-full of 5-10-5 fertilizer in the garage, and picked a place in the backyard where my little tree would eat up the sun.
It took most of my half hour to get the hole dug, the fertilizer added, the tree in and watered. When I had more time I would find two nice stakes and tie it up.
I stood back and admired my work. A line from one of my many volumes of poetry came back to me: “The ripest peach is highest on the tree.” Well, for a while at least I could reach anywhere they grew. Next year maybe I’d learn how to bake a peach pie.
20
Jack called Monday morning, sparing me an awkward moment. I told him I had gone upstate the previous day and spoken to an old friend who had offered the theory of the twins as halves of one whole. He said it certainly warranted testing, although he didn’t sound as enthusiastic as I had hoped. I don’t think he has the same philosophic bent that those of us immersed in English literature have.
“I’d like to find out if anyone at all ever spoke to the twins together,” I said. “You know, like the police, the lawyers, the psychiatrist.”
“I can tell you the police didn’t. The last thing you’d ever do with suspects is put them together. Chances are the others saw them separately, too. But I guess you’re looking for names.”
“I guess I am,” I said apologetically.
“Let me see what I can dig up. There’s a fair chance the lawyer’s still around if they got an 18B lawyer who works at a fixed fee after Legal Aid does the groundwork. They’re often young, liberal guys with some experience. The psychiatrist may be tougher.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Stick around your phone this morning. I may have something after I get down to the house.”
“Okay.”
“I had a great time Saturday.” He didn’t sound businesslike anymore.
“So did I.”
“We’ll do it again.”
“I hope so.”
“Good.” He sounded happy.
—
Jack got back to me before eleven.
“There were two lawyers, both Legal Aid staff. One was Vincent Capozzo.” He spelled it. “I can’t find him listed anywhere. The lawyer for James was Arnold Gold, and I’ve been through both the yellow and white pages, and there are three Arnold Golds in practice in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn. Want the numbers?”
“I guess so.” I wrote “Arnold Gold” on a piece of paper and listed the numbers. “I’ll try them a
ll,” I said when he’d given me the last one.
“The psychiatrist was named H-O-C-H-W-A-L-D. I can’t tell you much else about him.”
“I checked my notes from my interview with O’Connor. He said they got someone from Kings County. What’s that?”
“The big medical center in Brooklyn. I guess that’s a place to start.”
“Okay. I think I’ll use the phone till I come up with something.”
“I’ve got to go now. Talk to you later.”
I started with the Brooklyn Arnold Golds. The first one’s secretary said he had been in practice only since 1963 and he’d never been a Legal Aid lawyer. The second one’s secretary tittered when I said 1950. She said her husband had just graduated from law school two years ago and hadn’t been born until 1964. I gathered her husband was Arnold Gold.
I crossed off that one and called the first on my Manhattan list. The secretary there was kind enough to go and ask her Mr. Gold if he had had anything to do with the Talley case, but she, too, came back with a negative.
“Mr. Gold was admitted to the bar in 1958,” she said. “But there’s another Arnold Gold in Manhattan who’s a little older, and I know he was a Legal Aid attorney at one time. Would you like his number?”
“Please.”
She dictated the last number Jack had given me. I thanked her and dialed that one next.
That Mr. Gold was in court this morning, but his secretary admitted he was in his late sixties, and she told me rather proudly that he did a great deal of pro bono work. At the moment, he was involved in a class-action suit on behalf of the homeless.
I felt cheered by the details and more cheered by her promise that he would call me after three o’clock. In the intervening time I dashed over to Greenwillow and took Gene out for a drive. When we got back, I sat with James Talley, reminding him who I was and telling him, in answer to his questions, that I was still looking for his brother.