by L. R. Wright
“I don’t know,” said Hamilton, still looking at Harry, mulling things over. “Maybe she hasn’t got a plan. She seemed—not quite with it. Tense.”
“Tense,” said Harry. “Shit. She’s tense.”
“I think you should go talk to her,” said Hamilton suddenly.
“Who—me? Why?”
“I want to know if she’s told anybody else about your old man. Like her husband, or her kid. If she hasn’t...” Hamilton grinned and lowered his voice. “We’ll wage a campaign of terror, Harry, old son. That’ll persuade her to fade out of the picture right quick.”
“Hey, Hamilton,” Everett protested. “What’s this campaign of terror stuff? What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Relax, Everett. It’s a figure of speech,” said Hamilton, smiling up at him.
“Yeah, well, go there and say what?” Harry said uneasily, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“Do the friendly brother thing,” said Hamilton. “Or else yell at her, tell her she’s upsetting your old man—play it by ear.”
“I don’t know,” said Harry doubtfully. “Shit.”
“Whatever happens,” Hamilton told him, “you’re going to come out of there knowing more than when you went in.”
***
Maria had told him she was feeling sick. “It’s nothing, really. Just a cold, probably. Maybe the flu.”
“What are your symptoms?” Richard wanted to know.
“Oh, you know,” said Maria. “Aches. I ache all over.” Tears thrust themselves into her eyes.
“Maria,” said Richard in surprise, looking down at her lying in bed, huddling with her pain. “Can I get you something?”
“No, no, nothing. I just want to sleep,” she said, closing her eyes to prove it to him. She felt his indecision, then felt his kiss upon her forehead.
“You’re hot,” he said, putting his hand there.
“Yes, yes, I’ll take an aspirin, but later,” said Maria. “First I have to sleep. Good-bye, Richard.”
She heard him leave the bedroom, closing the door behind him, heard him speaking in low tones to Belinda, persuading her not to go in there.
“I’ll get someone else to take my shift at work,” Belinda said clearly as she and Richard walked off down the hall, and then Maria could no longer hear her words. But she knew that Belinda would come straight home from school to look after her.
If she did it today, then, it would be Belinda who found her. She didn’t want that. Oh she didn’t want that.
When she knew the house was empty she threw back the bedclothes and got up. She put on an old pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and moccasins, because today was not to be her death day after all. But tomorrow would be. Tomorrow she would dress with care because she wanted them to know she had been serene.
She would have to write a note. But what could she say? What could she possibly say?
The front doorbell rang. Maria stood still in the bedroom, listening intently. The doorbell rang, and rang again. She rushed downstairs to the door and opened it.
“Good morning,” said Alan Stewart’s son, smiling at her uncertainly with his ferret face.
Maria closed the door. She threw the bolt and stepped back.
“Hey!” she heard him call. “Hey!”
She reached out and opened the door. He looked at her apprehensively. “Come in,” said Maria.
She led him to the kitchen and told him to sit down. There was coffee; Maria poured two cups and sat at the table with him. He asked for cream and sugar. She fetched it. She sipped coffee. Several minutes passed before she became aware that he was speaking. She looked at him with interest, wondering what on earth he was saying, and decided to listen for a while.
“...my dad?”
“What?” said Maria.
“Your husband. Your kid. Do they know about him?”
She shook her head vigorously and tuned out again, watching his lips move, and his Adam’s apple, watching his eyes blink.
“...he’s an old man,” the ferret was saying the next time she allowed herself to hear. “It’s been a real shock to his system, having you loom up over his horizon.”
What an odd figure of speech, thought Maria. She didn’t care for it. She found it unsettling, the image of herself “looming,” like some threatening presence...but of course that was what she was, wasn’t it?...
“I mean, what the hell,” he said, agitated. “Here you come straight outta nowhere to mess up his life. Mine too. Shit. Who gave you the right?” He banged the mug on the table, and coffee sloshed onto the white cloth. Maria stood, abruptly, and he stood, too. He shouted at her, his face dangerously flushed: “Leave him alone! Get out of his life! Go away, goddamn you!”
She saw herself doing it—fleeing—running for the hills—vanishing. But to where? She looked into the ferret’s miserable, angry face...and her head was flooded with the image of a woman in a boarded-up room. She was a real woman, maybe a nun, a woman in Montreal a long time ago, a very long time ago, who had incarcerated herself in a single room: she had had herself boarded up in there, and there she had spent the rest of her life. She had done this for some reason Maria couldn’t remember, except that it had to do with God.
Maria stared at the ferret. “I can’t afford to.”
He shut his mouth and frowned at her.
“I’d love to do that—oh, I’d love to do that.” Tears flowed down her face, and she licked them into her mouth. “But I can’t work. Look at me. I can’t. I’m not fit.”
Alan Stewart’s son took a step back. Maria ducked her head and sat down, her hands in her lap.
“Do what?” he said. “You’d love to do what?”
“Leave. Go. Oh, God.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded vigorously. “I’m a danger to myself and others, yes,” she said. She sobbed into her hands.
“Pull yourself together,” said the ferret, trying to sound authoritative and achieving only a petulant bossiness. “I’ve gotta think.” He looked around him, trying to do this. “You’d go away?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
“For a long time?” said Harry severely.
“Forever,” she said, using her hands to wipe her face, which Harry noticed with distaste was wet with tears and sticky with stuff from her nose.
“It wouldn’t have to be for that long.” Was this possible? he wondered. Could this possibly work? He couldn’t decide. He needed to consult with Hamilton. “How much would you need?”
“I don’t know,” said Maria. “Enough to buy food.”
“And shelter,” muttered the ferret. He looked around and spotted the paper towels hanging beneath one of the cabinets. He tore off a couple of squares and gave them to her. “It’d be only the basic minimum,” he warned.
Maria nodded.
“I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get back to you.”
“Today,” said Maria. She wiped her face and blew her nose. She felt suddenly calm, immensely calm.
“Forget today, today’s not possible,” said Alan Stewart’s son, shaking his head.
“It’s got to be today,” said Maria. “That’s that.”
***
“She’s wacko,” Harry told Hamilton. They’d been conferring for half an hour, and he was still worried. “What’s to say she wouldn’t change her mind and just show up one day, banging on my old man’s door again? I mean, we can’t be sure she’s gonna stay where we put her, just because she says she will.”
Hamilton looked like a big cat, lounging on Harry’s sofa, a big, gray, athletic cat, capable of speed, infused with power. “You said she wants to go away,” he said.
“Yeah, now, sure. But she might change her damn mind, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Hamilton stretched, bright-eyed and smiling, and moved to the edge of the sofa. “That’s my job. I’m the one who makes sure she stays put. Remember?” In exchange for this, they had agreed that Harry would pay
him thirty-two thousand dollars, half now and half in six months, and that he would cut Hamilton in on his inheritance, in due course, that amount still to be negotiated.
Harry studied him, uneasy. “What’re we doing here, anyway?”
“Nothing illegal,” said Hamilton. “Jesus, Harry. We’re paying her money to stay away from your old man, that’s what we’re doing. And if she wants to use it to pull up stakes and ditch her husband, who cares? That’s her business.”
“She’s wacko, though,” Harry said in wonderment.
Hamilton slapped his knees and stood up. “I’ve got to get going.” He’d offered to set up Maria Buscombe’s living arrangements. “You get your ass in gear and come up with the money.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve got two hours, tops, pal.” He waited until Harry had bestirred himself out of his chair, then left and headed off on foot down to Bellevue Street and his own apartment building.
There was a bounce in Hamilton’s step and true lightness in his heart. The only thing to worry about was whether Harry could pull off quickly enough the black market sale of several pieces of his father’s art, which was how their enterprise was to be financed. But Harry’s eyes had gotten so shifty when Hamilton quizzed him about this that Hamilton had decided he’d done it before and had good reason to be confident of his success.
Hamilton, whistling, rode the elevator to the sixteenth floor and recalled the woman in the parking garage, the subject of his first fear poem.
He liked the idea of Maria Buscombe curled up in a nest that was of his—Hamilton’s—making.
In his apartment he picked up the phone and made the necessary arrangements.
***
Maria sat by the telephone in the kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to the sounds made by the house and by the world outside. The outside sounds trickled in through minuscule cracks and fissures, she thought, or else they seeped in through the skin and bones of the house, maybe transforming themselves into some other medium, able to become for an instant part of the house, then, once inside, themselves again. There could be no other explanation, she thought, for sounds occurring out there being audible in here, with all the doors and windows closed.
The kitchen clock said it was eleven o’clock.
Maria wanted to think about Belinda. But Belinda flew from her mind whenever Maria tried to consider her.
The phone rang. No—it didn’t make its usual ringing sound, it actually pealed, like an enormous bell, extraordinarily loudly, so loudly that Maria was almost knocked off her chair. She watched it, astounded, expecting to see the receiver rattle around in its cradle, the sound was so thunderous. Finally, cautiously, she picked it up.
“Okay, it’s all arranged,” said Harry Stewart, sounding out of breath. “My partner and I, we’ll pick you up at two o’clock sharp. Be ready.” He hung up, and so did Maria.
She sat down at the kitchen table and looked out the glass doors into the garden. She sat there for a long time, listening to the quiet ticking of the clock and to the quiet voice inside her head, which was sometimes there and sometimes somewhere else and which told her now to be calm, to have faith in decisions taken: and she listened respectfully, for it was a voice that at least for the moment had saved not only Belinda’s life, but Maria’s, too.
She had to make a list, now, of things to take with her. She would take hardly anything at all.
***
Dear Richard. Dear Belinda. You are all I have to love, but I have to leave you. I don’t know where I’m going, but I have to leave you. I’m sorry.
All my love,
Maria.
***
Hamilton rapped at the door and waited, rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet. When she opened it he stepped back and gestured toward the street, where Harry waited in his car.
“I’m his partner,” said Hamilton, with a wink, and stepped into the house. “You all set?”
He wandered down the hall to the room with the ironwork furniture, which turned out to be a sunroom/kitchen. “Nice,” he said approvingly, looking around at the potted plants. “Nice,” he said to Maria as she entered the room behind him.
“I’m ready,” she said hoarsely.
He turned and studied her, hands in his pockets. A small, thin woman in her mid-forties with long hair, black, beginning to turn gray, which she had tied back in an unflattering ponytail. She was wearing moccasins and gray sweatpants, a sweatshirt that was a lighter gray, and no makeup. Hamilton imagined her with her hair up, choosing a dress, standing in front of a huge closet crammed with clothes, standing there naked—he could see her pale smooth naked back—looking for a dress that would push up her breasts and cinch tight around her waist, a dress short enough to reveal the swelling of her thighs... He became aware that she had spoken. “Excuse me?”
“Were you really writing a story about adopted children?”
Hamilton laughed.
Outside, Harry honked the horn.
“Come on,” said Hamilton. “Where’s your stuff?”
***
“You’ll let me know how they are? You do promise?” She was hanging on to the door frame, clutching this great jeezly doll and looking exhausted, and behind her on the kitchen table in the basement apartment was a bunch of stuff in bags and boxes that they’d had to buy for her—food, and some china, and some pots and pans, because the place didn’t come equipped with that stuff.
Harry was exhausted, too. “Yeah, yeah,” he said irritably. He just wanted to get out of there.
“We promise,” said Hamilton, and Harry turned to see him smiling at her. “Really. We’ll give you regular reports.”
“There’s no phone here, though.”
“They’ll come with the money,” said Hamilton. “By courier. You take care, now,” he said warmly, and he and Harry started along the walk that led around the house.
“See, I told you,” Harry muttered. “Wacko. She’s wacko.”
“She’ll be okay,” Hamilton said cheerily. Although he agreed with Harry, of course. The woman was not rational. He’d have to keep a close eye on her.
They got to the street and headed for Harry’s car. Just before he climbed in, Hamilton looked up and waved at the landlady, who was watching from the upstairs living room window, and who happened to be his mother. She gave him a big smile as she waved back.
THE PRESENT
Chapter 42
LATE WEDNESDAY EVENING Cassandra was reading in bed. Alberg, too, was holding a book, propped up on pillows next to her. But his mind was elsewhere, pondering Maria Buscombe’s photograph album as he watched his cats. They were curled up on a chair crammed between an enormous oak wardrobe and the closet. Whenever one cat stretched the other two wakened for a moment and waited, politely, for the stretch to conclude before repositioning themselves.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the front door.
Alberg threw back the covers and got up, reaching for his robe. “Sit tight,” he said to Cassandra.
When he opened the door Sid Sokolowski was standing on the porch. “It is for sure Frank Garroway’s grandson Dave who’s our vandal,” he announced. “He got caught red-handed dumping the Morrisons’ garbage two blocks away in Richard Greverman’s backyard.” The sergeant put out an unsteady hand and leaned against the wall.
“Uh-huh,” said Alberg.
“So here I am reporting it, just as it happened. Wrote it down. Went home. Decided to tell you it in person.”
A lamp went on in the living room, and Cassandra appeared at Alberg’s elbow.
“Did you drive here, Sid?” said Alberg.
Sokolowski grinned. “No, I walked.” He frowned. “Sure I drove here. Course I drove here.”
“Come in, Sid,” said Cassandra. “Bring him inside, Karl.”
“No no no no,” the sergeant protested. Alberg took his arm and pulled him into the house. “Now you’re gonna make coffee or some damn thing, right?” he said.
“Right,” said Ca
ssandra.
“No no no. No. I’ll just sit down here for a minute, then I’ll be on my way.” Carefully, with great concentration, he lowered himself onto the sofa. “There.” He looked around the room, then sorrowfully up at Alberg. “The word is you’re getting married.”
“Yeah, I am. We are.”
“Well, then congratulations are in order, I guess.”
“I was going to tell you, Sid. I just thought—”
“I know. Me and Elsie.” He swept his hand across his face.
“Yeah.”
“Makes it awkward for you.”
“Jesus. Sid?... Sid?”
The sergeant’s face had crumpled, and he had begun to weep. Alberg looked frantically toward the kitchen. He could hear the tap running as Cassandra prepared to make coffee. He hurried to the bathroom for a box of tissues and hunkered down on the floor next to Sid. “Here.” He thrust tissues at him. The sergeant pushed them away, then grabbed them back and mopped at his face.
“Ah. I’m sorry, Karl. Too many beers, that’s all it is.” He looked blearily at Alberg. “She’s going out on dates now. God knows what’ll be next.” He took another handful of tissues. “She’s everything to me, Karl. I didn’t used to know it like I know it now.”
“Have you told her that?” Alberg glanced into the kitchen; Cassandra was spooning coffee into the filter.
“Not in so many words. I don’t think it would make any difference, anyway. Shit. I’m starting to sober up. Maybe I should have another beer.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He sank back onto the sofa, and Alberg stood up, pulling at his robe, which had gaped open, tying it closed.
“If I’d told her a long time ago, maybe,” said Sokolowski, staring moodily into space. “But it’s not something she wants to hear me say anymore.”
“Maybe you should try it, though.”
Sokolowski turned to him and tried to smile. “So. When’s the big day?”
“We haven’t decided,” said Alberg.