Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

“I am well, dear. The grandbabies?”

  “Well, Ronnie’s wife is waiting on twins.”

  “And that will make—?”

  “Nineteen, God love ’em all.”

  “Well, congratulations,” I said. “Is Simon Legree in?”

  “He told me to say no. But for you, Mr. Coyne, he is in. Sit tight.”

  A minute later Charlie came onto the line. “Let’s see,” he said. “Today’s Wednesday. Not today. And not tomorrow or the next day. Maybe Saturday.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of fishing,” I said. “But Saturday sounds good.”

  “The Farmington?”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “You got it.” He hesitated. “That wasn’t why you called?”

  “I can’t account for my subconscious, God knows. But what I thought I had in mind was more mundane.”

  “A favor, right?”

  “Yep.”

  He heaved a big phony sigh. “What this time?”

  “An address and phone number.”

  “You try the phone book?”

  “Well, shit, Charlie.”

  “Sorry. Let’s have it.”

  “Mary Ellen Ames. That’s A-m-e-s. Somewhere in the 617 area code. She has an unlisted telephone, so I know she’s there.”

  “This’ll cost you, pal.”

  “I’ll buy you a ham and cheese sandwich Saturday. That’s it. This is a piece of cake for you.”

  “I’m gonna hold out for dinner on the way home at that Mexican place in West Hartford.”

  “You’re a tough guy.”

  “Damn right. I’ll get back to you.”

  “When?”

  “You in a hurry?”

  “Yes. I’ve got a client who’s dying.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  He actually called me back in twenty minutes. Mary Ellen Ames had a Beacon Street address, a low number that meant an expensive town house overlooking the Common. I dialed the phone number Charlie gave me.

  It rang three times. Then a machine answered the phone. “This is Mary Ellen,” came a breathless voice. “I’m not here now, or maybe I just can’t come to the phone or something. But if you’ll leave me some kind of intriguing message, I’ll call you back. Wait for the old beep. Ready? Here it comes.”

  The old beep was a long one. It suggested that her tape was full of messages. When it finally ended, I said, “This is Brady Coyne calling. I’m your mother’s attorney. It’s very important that we talk. Please call me as soon as you can.” I left both my office and my home number. I hoped my message was sufficiently intriguing.

  I spent the rest of the morning doing the essentially sad things that keep lawyers in business—working out problems for people who don’t trust each other enough to work them out themselves, preparing them for the inevitable tragedies that befall us all sooner or later, protecting them against an untrustworthy world, negotiating bureaucracies for them, interceding with the state on their behalf.

  An honest and honorable world wouldn’t need lawyers.

  Susan Ames, I kept thinking, didn’t need a lawyer. But she needed a friend. I’d rather be a good friend than a good lawyer, anyway. I hoped I could persuade Mary Ellen, when I found her, to be a good daughter.

  I wondered about Susan’s relationship with Terri Fiori. I guessed that Susan regarded her more as a daughter than a general factotum.

  I remembered how Terri had winked at me. Susan had said she was beautiful, and I agreed. I’m a sucker for olive skin that needs no makeup and black hair and big brown eyes.

  I lit a cigarette and dialed Susan’s number in Concord. Terri answered.

  “General,” I said. “It’s Brady Coyne.”

  “Oh. Hi, Mr. Coyne.”

  “You better call me Brady.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m about to ask you out to dinner.”

  She hesitated. She hesitated too long.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. You weren’t wearing a ring…”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Yeah. A guy, though, huh?”

  “No guy.”

  “Well, then, how about Friday night?”

  Another hesitation. Then, “I don’t think so, Brady. But thank you.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s flattering.” A pause. “Did you want to speak to Susan?”

  “No,” I said. “I called to talk to you.”

  “Oh. Well, I hope you understand.”

  “I don’t. But it’s okay.”

  I hung up, stubbed out my cigarette, and tried to get back to my desk work. My mind kept wandering. I hate getting shot down.

  Around noon Julie buzzed me. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said.

  “Send him on in.”

  “You better come out,” she said.

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  I got up and went out to the reception area. He was sitting on the corner of Julie’s desk. In spite of his hair, which was a little longer than I remembered it, and in spite of the little gold earring that sparkled in his left earlobe, which hadn’t been there the last time I saw him, I recognized him instantly.

  “Hey, Pop,” he said.

  I went over to him. He hopped off the desk. We shook hands, hesitated, then hugged each other. “How are you, son?” I said.

  “Great,” said Billy. “Awesome.”

  I stood back and looked at him. My older son stood about six-two. A solid one-ninety. A handsome kid. No. A man. Twenty years old, and a man. About the age Mary Ellen Ames had been the last time Susan saw her. It gave me a pang when I made that connection.

  “Want some linguini?” I said to him.

  He grinned. God, I thought, he must devastate the girls at UMass. “That’s what I’m here for. Marie’s linguini with clam sauce.”

  Julie was smiling at us. Julie’s big on family. So am I, actually, even though mine has been fractured for ten years. She waved her hand at us. “Go. Everything’s under control here.”

  We walked to Marie’s at Kenmore Square. Billy, who was brought up properly, mostly by Gloria, knew enough to inquire about my fishing adventures. I asked how his classes were going. We both gave upbeat answers.

  I didn’t bother observing that he was in Boston rather than Amherst, where the university is located, at noontime on a Wednesday.

  He explained between the salad and the pasta. “I’m trying to get an internship at the Aquarium,” he told me. “Got an interview at two. I’m really into marine biology.”

  “I thought you were majoring in government.”

  “Shit, no careers there. I switched.”

  “Well,” I said, “marine biology is good.”

  He grinned. “You never told me what to do. You never gave me advice except when I asked. I appreciate that.”

  “It’s not that I haven’t had to bite my tongue,” I said.

  “I know that. I’ve seen the blood dribbling off your chin plenty of times.”

  We chatted about the perennial plight of the Red Sox bullpen, the price of gasoline, Billy’s girlfriends. When the coffee arrived, my son leaned across the table and said to me, “Mom was up to school on Sunday.”

  “Nice,” I said. “How is she?”

  “She had a guy with her.”

  I shrugged. “Nice guy?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Nice as pie.” He grinned. “A lawyer, actually.”

  “Couldn’t have been a nice guy, a lawyer.”

  “Well, there are exceptions.” He frowned. “Dad, this guy, he’s like closer to my age than Mom’s, honest to God.”

  “Your mother’s a young-looking woman. Don’t blame him. Good for her.”

  Billy stared at me for a minute, then shrugged. “She never did that before.”

  “Did what?”

  “Brought a guy with her.”

  “She’s serious, then.”

  “She told me she was gonna marr
y him. This Richard.”

  “People do things like that.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess. Funny. When you and Mom split, I always figured it was temporary. It was like you belonged together, and the fact that you didn’t live together and had gone to court and everything didn’t really change anything. I guess I still think that way. You know? I mean, you two are my parents. To me, you’re a pair. It was weird, seeing her and Richard walking around the campus holding hands.”

  I smiled. “I can understand that.” I understood his feelings perfectly, in fact. Picturing it in my mind, it felt weird to me, too.

  We finished up and strolled back to Copley Square. We stopped outside my office. “I’m gonna hop a cab over to the Aquarium,” said Billy.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck with the interview.”

  “Thanks. I can use it.”

  “One question?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Um, what’s with the earring?”

  He grinned. “That’s what Mom said. Only difference, it was the very first thing she said. Before she even kissed me. She goes, ‘My God, William. There’s something sticking in your ear.’”

  “How did you answer her?”

  “I told her it happened when I was drunk.”

  “Ah,” I said. “So that explains it.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “I guess that helps me understand why you two didn’t make it.”

  “What does?”

  “It’s the first thing she mentioned.” He spotted a taxi and waved at it. “But it’s the last thing you mentioned.”

  “That,” I told him as the cab swerved to the curb, “is exactly the difference between us.”

  We shook hands. Billy opened the back door of the taxi. “He’s a wuss, Dad.”

  “A what?”

  “A wuss. A dweeb. You know.”

  “Who’s a wuss?”

  “Richard.”

  “He’s a lawyer,” I said. “What’d you expect?”

  5

  FOR THE NEXT FEW days I coddled clients, conferred with other lawyers, negotiated out-of-court settlements, composed wills, created codicils, and signed all the letters that Julie wrote for me. I even made a court appearance.

  Mary Ellen Ames did not return my call.

  On Friday I called her again. I left the same message as the previous one. This time I used the word “urgent.”

  Charlie and I drove down to the Farmington River in Connecticut on Saturday. Each of us caught a few brown trout on small flies. They were spooky and picky and hard to catch, the way we like them. The fish had already begun to take on their autumn spawning colors. Golden bellies, spots as red as drops of fresh blood. The males were starting to grow their bellicose underslung jaws, the better to frighten off sexual competitors. The water was low and clear as Beefeater’s. The golds and crimsons of the foliage, the same shades as the trout, reflected on the Farmington’s smooth currents. On the way home we stopped at Pablo’s in West Hartford. We washed down our burritos with a couple bottles of Dos Equis, on me.

  We got back late. No messages on my machine, from Mary Ellen or anybody else. I slept late. Sunday afternoon I watched the Sox, who were still miraculously in the pennant hunt, do battle with the Blue Jays on my old black-and-white television. Actually, I didn’t watch the pictures. I read the Sunday Globe and listened to Ned Martin, that most literate of all sports announcers, use words such as “penultimate” and “modicum” and “quintessential” to explain the action at Fenway. I wished Ned still worked radio, where he belonged. Then I wouldn’t need to turn on the tube to hear him.

  The day passed with no reply from Mary Ellen.

  I tried her number on Sunday night just before bed, and again Monday morning before leaving for work. No answer. I didn’t bother leaving another message. It was apparent that she had no intention of calling me back. I figured I’d made a tactical error mentioning Susan. I supposed I didn’t comprehend the magnitude of their estrangement.

  So Monday after lunch I went to pay her a visit. I decided to walk to her place on Beacon Street from my office in Copley Square. It was one of those unnaturally warm early autumn days in New England. Indian summer. Normal folks love such days. They shuffle through the crispy leaves on the sidewalks. They spread blankets on the banks of the Charles and stare at its reflections, or they take strolls through parks and forests spying on migrating birds. They paddle canoes over the placid surfaces of woodland ponds.

  Not me. The fall is for sweaters. Frost on the pumpkin. Skim ice on the ponds. Indian summer days make me worry about holes in the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, global warming. They remind me that one day the polar ice cap will melt and the sea will rise to inundate Cape Cod and Back Bay, that plants and trees, deprived of their winter dormancy, will wear themselves out trying to procreate year round, that trout rivers will become too hot to nurture the fish I love the most.

  Fall means death, yes. But it’s supposed to, even though it does tend to depress me. Death and renewal. That’s what autumn’s for.

  By the time I was standing in front of Mary Ellen’s building I had my jacket slung over my shoulder and my tie loosened. My slender attaché case felt like it was loaded with bricks. My shirt was sticking to my back.

  It was one of those elegant old brick edifices just down the street from the golden dome of the State House and overlooking, as I had suspected, the Boston Common. A hundred years ago a single old Boston Brahmin family—maybe even a Cabot or a Lodge or a Saltonstall or a Lowell—had lived there with a houseful of servants. Eventually a developer got hold of it and chopped it up into apartments. Then, with the condominium craze of the seventies, it was converted into expensive town houses. That’s what had happened to all but a handful of those classic old buildings.

  Mary Ellen Ames was living at one of the best addresses in the city.

  Behind a shoulder-high black wrought-iron fence lay two immaculately manicured square patches of grass. Rhododendrons and azaleas grew against the front of the building, and at their feet pink and white impatiens bloomed bravely, awaiting the fall’s first killing frost.

  I unlatched the gate and walked up the brick path. I opened the tall front door and found myself in a high-ceilinged foyer with gleaming white marble floors. A mural depicting the Boston Tea Party adorned one of the walls. The Boston Massacre was on the other. I glanced around, looking for rows of mailboxes and buzzers or a telephone. There were none.

  I mounted the two marble steps that led up to an inside door. I peered through the glass into a spacious lobby. A glittering crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. These floors were also white marble. The walls were hung with dark portraits in clunky gold frames.

  On the far side of the lobby a chocolate-skinned man with snow-white hair sat at a desk. He was bent over a book. I waved, but he didn’t see me.

  I noticed a bell beside the door. I depressed it and saw the man look toward me over the tops of the half glasses that were perched low on his nose. I waved again at him.

  “What can I do for you?” came a disembodied voice from somewhere over my head.

  I looked around, then at the man. I shrugged.

  “Just speak, sir” came his voice. “I can hear you.”

  “I’m looking for Mary Ellen Ames,” I said.

  “Who should I say is here?”

  “Brady Coyne. I’m her mother’s attorney.”

  Usually I call myself a lawyer. The word “attorney” always sounds affected to my ear. But lay people, I have learned, seem to be more responsive to the word “attorney” than they are to the word “lawyer.” Ever since Nixon, “lawyer” has been a dirty word.

  I watched as the man picked up a telephone on his desk and punched some buttons on a console. He stared at the ceiling for a few moments, then replaced the receiver. “She’s not answering” his voice said. “Sorry. Want to leave a message?”

  “Can I talk to you?” I said.

  “Sure. Go ah
ead.”

  “This,” I said, gesturing toward the ceiling where the speaker was hiding, “is a little weird.”

  I saw him smile. He got up and came to the door. He put his face close to it and said, “You got any identification?”

  I held up my attaché case for him.

  He grinned and shook his head.

  I removed one of my business cards from the inside pocket of my jacket and pressed it against the glass. He bent to examine it, then looked up. “Anything else?”

  I opened the attaché case and removed the photograph of Mary Ellen that Susan had given me. I showed it to him. He looked at it, then opened the door. “Come on in.”

  I stepped inside. I held out my hand to him. “Brady Coyne,” I said.

  We shook. “Harold Wainwright,” he said. “Sorry about all that. They’re very particular about security.”

  “I understand.”

  “That’s a pretty old picture of her.”

  “Eleven or twelve years. It’s her high school graduation portrait. You know Mary Ellen, then.”

  “Sure. I know everyone here. There’s only sixteen units. So what can I do for you?”

  “It’s very important that I talk with Miz Ames. See, I’m her mother’s lawyer, as I said. Susan Ames is dying of cancer. They give her maybe a month. I’ve got to talk to Mary Ellen about the estate. More to the point, I guess, the mother and daughter haven’t spoken for eleven years. Susan wants to reconcile. Before…”

  Harold Wainwright nodded. “Sure. But I don’t know how I can help you.”

  “Well, what time does she usually leave in the morning? When does she get back? I’ve tried calling her, but she doesn’t call me back, so I guess I’m going to have to catch her.”

  He stared at the chandelier for a moment. “I’m on seven to seven, sir. Days. Can’t say Miss Ames keeps any regular schedule. In, out, whenever. Nice gal, though. Always has something friendly to say. Not like some of ’em, they’ll look right through you like you’re a piece of furniture, if you know what I mean. Not Miss Ames. Always got a smile for Harold, a kind word.”

  “Did you see her today?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not on weekends, so I can’t help you there.”

  “Well,” I said, “when was the last time you saw her?”