Void in Hearts

by William G. Tapply

  Stacks of shoe boxes teetered precariously against one wall. A dozen, at least. And beside the shoe boxes were three large cardboard cartons.

  Becca pointed to the boxes. “I think his photographs and tapes and stuff are in there. Somewhere.”

  It wasn’t that difficult. The cardboard boxes contained tape cassettes. They were unlabeled. But Les hadn’t mentioned tapes to me, so I assumed there was no purpose to listening to all of them.

  The shoe boxes contained slender glassine envelopes of negatives. Thousands of them. Each shoe box was labeled with a year. One of them bore the inscription “current.”

  So we sat crosslegged on the floor and the two of us began to slide negatives out of their envelopes and hold them up to the light.

  “It’s hard to tell what I’m seeing,” Becca observed.

  “Look for a man and a woman. Les mentioned them getting into and out of a cab. Sitting on a park bench. Coming out of a building. He said he got nothing explicit.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “He failed, then, didn’t he?”

  I smiled. “Yes. That’s what he said.”

  Les Katz, I quickly learned, hadn’t failed very often. I was amazed at the number of people who made love in automobiles and rowboats, or standing up against brick buildings, or under a blanket on the ground, or huddled together enveloped in a raincoat. Inventive. No wonder Les loved his work.

  Lovemaking looks very different in negatives. It’s an abstraction, the dark colors white and the light colors black. They looked, many of them, like the inkblots shrinks show people to diagnose schizophrenia, or like tricky optical illusions such as the one that looks either like a vase or two female profiles, and you have to make a conscious mental adjustment to see it both ways. In Les’s negatives, faces and bare breasts were black, shadows white. I had to translate that reversal consciously as I examined the negatives.

  Some of the strips had pictures of people doing ordinary things. These I examined carefully. But virtually all of the strips had at least one shot of something explicit.

  “Hey!” said Becca. She held a strip of negatives to me.

  I took it from her and held it up to the light. “This might be it,” I said.

  The strip showed three successive shots of two people seated on a bench. Then the same couple stepping out of a taxi. He had snapped them through a long lens, I figured, because many of them were just head and shoulder shots. It was impossible to judge the quality of the photos. But I was certain that prints would show identifiable faces.

  “Here’s another one,” said Becca. I took it. One seemed to be a long shot taken from an unusually low angle. Several people were moving into and out of a building. A second was a closer shot of the same scene, with many faces in it. Three pictures were very blurry, as if something had moved in front of the lens. Traffic, maybe.

  I stood up and slipped the negatives into the inside pocket of my jacket. Then I held both hands down to Becca. She took them and I helped her stand up. We retrieved our drinks. Both glasses were empty.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “Now? Now we have that soup.”

  “No, I mean…”

  “After the soup, and after the brandy, if you’ve got any, you run yourself a hot bath and get some sleep. And I will get some prints made. Then we’ll know what we have.”

  She took my hand and led me back to the kitchen. I refilled both of our glasses. Then I perched on a stool and watched her open a can of soup and dump it into a pot. She turned the heat on under it. “Want a salad or something?”

  “Terrific,” I said. “My appetite is returning.”

  She sipped her wine. “Those negatives. Progress, huh?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. Even if we get faces that are identifiable, I’m not sure where we go from there.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Of course. We wouldn’t have names to go with the faces. I never thought of that.”

  “Hey,” I said. “First things first. We’ll figure out something.”

  She came over to me and stood in front of me, wedging her hips between my knees. She put her hands on my shoulders. “Tell me something, Brady Coyne,” she said softly.

  “Anything.”

  Her eyes searched mine. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did Les really pay you? I mean, are you really his attorney? Did he really give you a retainer? Or are you some kind of nice guy?”

  I put my hands on her waist and drew her closer to me. I kissed her forehead. “Les paid me,” I said quietly. “Honest. You can’t get away with accusing me of being a nice guy.”

  She leaned away from me and smiled. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Now, Becca. If I’m going to be your lawyer…”

  She stepped away from me. “I know, I know. Anyway, the soup’s almost ready and I haven’t even started that salad.”

  6

  “HEY,” SAID CHARLIE, DOING his imitation of an old Jackie Gleason character, “what’s that slop you’re eating?”

  “Calamari,” I said, impaling a hunk of what looked like old inner tube on my fork and waving it at him. “Yum.”

  “That is squid.”

  “By any other name, Charlie. You ought to try this calamari. Nobody can prepare it like Marie.”

  “I always thought,” he said, “that eating stuff like squid and eel and brains and thymus glands and the lining from cow bellies was nothing more than a goddamn affectation. I mean, let’s face it, nobody really likes that shit.”

  “I do. I love sweetbreads and tripe. Also kidneys and livers and tongue.”

  “Bullshit. Calamari is just a joke. The Italians give it a different name, foist it off on non-Mediterranean types like you, and chuckle up their shirtsleeves.”

  I took a big bite. “Mmm. Delicious. You really ought to try the calamari. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Charlie poked at his manicotti. “Chacun à son gout,” he muttered. “Pour me some more wine, huh?”

  I refilled our glasses from the carafe of red that Marie always serves Charlie and me on the house. We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Charlie looked up at me. “Okay. Let’s have it, boy. You don’t offer to buy me lunch unless you’re after something.”

  “I need a sounding board,” I said.

  Charlie McDevitt and I had roomed together at Yale Law School. Afterward he became a prosecutor with the Boston office of the U.S. Justice Department. He was just about my best friend, the one man I trusted without reservation. We fished and played golf together, bet lunches on the outcomes of every sports event we could think of, and from time to time did each other professional favors.

  The truth was, Charlie helped me a lot more than I helped him. Neither of us paid the least attention to the balance sheet.

  I told Charlie how I had inherited Becca Katz as a client, and how I seemed to have blundered into a situation where I was doing a lot of work for ten dollars. As I related the chronology of events, Charlie’s grin grew increasingly broad. When I paused to shove another hunk of calamari into my mouth, Charlie said, “You always did have that streak in you. What was it you wanted to make a career of back there in New Haven?”

  “Civil liberties,” I said.

  He spread his hands. “Now you’re doing pro bono work for bereaved widow ladies. You’ve found your niche. I never thought it was right you should be making all that money holding hands with rich old ladies anyway. So now you’re doing good works. My congratulations.”

  “You don’t think I should tell her?”

  “Too late, old buddy. You want to tell her you lied to her?”

  “Guess I can’t,” I said dolefully. “It’s not that I mind helping her. Frankly, Charlie, the whole thing is complicated by the fact that, ah…”

  He tilted back his head and opened his mouth. “Ahh, he said, signifying a rush of understanding. “The widow lady, huh?”

  I nodded. “I’m not very proud of myself.�
�

  “You felt sorry for her.”

  “Something like that. I mean, things were going all right. We found those negatives, she fixed soup and made a nice salad, and afterward I was all set to leave. She said, why not have a brandy before I went. It was snowing outside, you remember, one of those soft snowstorms that makes it seem warm and cozy indoors. We’d had a couple of drinks before we ate. All that tension. She put on this record. Some guy playing a flute. Sexy music. Ah, hell, Charlie.”

  “So she dragged you off to bed, kicking and screaming.”

  “Nah. It wasn’t like that. She started talking about Les again. She’s sad, but she’s relieved, too. She tells me how they had no sex—not like she’s complaining, and not really like she’s hinting at anything. Very matter-of-fact. Just a big void in her life, which she realized she had succeeded in suppressing. Charlie, she’s not that attractive. Not objectively. But she’s got a great sad smile, and all the funny parts of her seem to fit together pleasantly. Makes you want to hug her, you know?”

  “So you did. Hug her.”

  I shrugged. “I meant nothing by it. It sort of evolved into something else. And now—”

  “Now you don’t know how to deal with her.”

  I found that last hunk of calamari amid the tangle of linguini on my plate. I maneuvered the calamari onto my fork and then pointed at Charlie with it. “I think she might be in love with me,” I said.

  “She’s not in love with you, counselor,” he said. “But she may think she is. Which could turn out to be a whole lot worse.” He took a big gulp of wine and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “The lady’s gotta be real vulnerable just now. Be careful, pal. You’re kinda vulnerable yourself.”

  I nodded sourly. “I keep falling short of this image of myself.”

  “Hey, we all do. Reminds me of what happened to Burleigh Whitt. You ever meet him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Used to be in enforcement with Interior. I thought maybe he went fishing with us once. Anyway, Burl was a kid out of the Maine woods, full of piss and vinegar. He always hated the paperwork, and finally a few years ago he quit and got a job as a game warden back home in the Pine Tree State. They put him way the hell and gone up there where there aren’t even any towns. Just quadrants on a topographic map. He hadn’t been there long when he caught a rumor that this old-timer seemed to be bringing home fish by the sackful. Burl figured he had to be doing something illegal. Being new and unknown around there, Burl was able to wangle an invitation with the old guy to go fishing with him, and—”

  “Charlie,” I interrupted, “is this one of your stories?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You ask Tiny Wheeler. He knows Burl. Anyhow, Burl meets the old fella at the crack of dawn, they take one of those back roads to this little pristine lake way back in the woods. Supposed to be full of salmon. They climb into the old guy’s boat and motor to the far end. Old guy cuts the engine. ‘This here’s a hot spot, ayuh,’ he says. Then he reaches under his seat and hauls out a big gunnysack. He shoves his hand into the sack and pulls out a stick of dynamite. He lights it and flings it overboard. It explodes in the water, and a minute later there are all these giant salmon floating belly-up in the water. The old guy gets out the oars and he rows around, sorting out the big fish and tossing them into the boat.”

  “Charlie—”

  He held up his hand. “So they’re sitting there, the rowboat practically shipping water from that load of big fish, and Burl says to the old guy, ‘Okay, buddy. I got you. Dynamiting fish is illegal, and I’m your new warden.’ The old guy looks at him and nods. ‘Ayuh,’ he says, ‘I know who you are.’ And he reaches into that sack and pulls out another stick of dynamite. He lights it and hands it to Burl. ‘Now it’s your turn to try some fishin’, son,’ he says.”

  I sighed deeply. “This really happened, huh?”

  Charlie traced an X over his heart. “Swear it,” he said. “There’s a point to that story, Brady.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Now I’m the one holding that stick of dynamite, right?”

  He grinned. “Good luck, pal.”

  “I’m not sure you’ve earned your free lunch today.”

  He shrugged. “Think about it.”

  I nosed my BMW into the driveway and sat there for a few minutes. High mounds of snow rose up along the sides. I wondered if Gloria had persuaded Joey to do his chores, or if she had hired a neighborhood kid to do the shoveling.

  Under its mantle of snow, the familiar Garrison colonial looked smaller than I remembered it. It was still painted gray, the way it always had been. But now the shutters were black. I had always painted them dark green. I liked the green better.

  When Gloria and I bought that house nearly twenty years earlier, we assumed it would be where we would raise our two young boys to manhood. Wellesley, Massachusetts, seemed just the place for a young, upwardly mobile family to make their headquarters as they chased after the American Dream. Prosperous suburbia, thence to competitive Ivy League colleges for the boys, while Papa made lots of money out of other people’s legal difficulties, and Mama had the leisure to snap artsy photographs.

  We joined the country club.

  We subscribed to the local theater company.

  Gloria was elected president of the elementary-school PTA.

  I canvassed the neighborhood on behalf of the American Cancer Society.

  The boys played Little League baseball and Pop Warner football.

  I coached their teams.

  And Gloria and I got divorced.

  The American Dream.

  In the first few years after the divorce, I went back to Wellesley often. I mended broken things. I picked up the boys for weekends with their father. I allowed Gloria to persuade me to stay for a drink when I brought them back on Sunday evenings.

  Gradually, without planning it or discussing it or agreeing to it, I stopped visiting the house. It became Gloria’s, not mine. And that was part of the separation process for us that, as I sat there smoking a cigarette in my car parked in my old driveway and recalled our aborted luncheon date at the Iruña two weeks earlier, I realized had still not been completed.

  Perhaps those things never were completed.

  I patted the envelope in the inside pocket of my jacket. Les Katz’s negatives. Gloria, once she got free of our marriage—which took several years after the divorce—had become a professional photographer. She did free-lance work for several national magazines. I had seen her stuff, and it was good.

  She had told me that she had converted the basement into a studio. The old bathroom was enlarged to make a darkroom. She could make prints for me while I waited. I suspected I might need blowups of faces, once I got a look at what was on those negatives. She could do that for me, too.

  I had called her that morning. “Gloria,” I said, mustering as much cheerful formality as I could, “I need your professional expertise.”

  “He needs me,” she said. “Mirabile dictu. What is it, Brady?”

  “Could you make some prints for me from a set of black-and-white negatives?”

  “Mail them over. It’s no problem.”

  “I need them today, actually.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “You want to bring them out, is that it?”

  “I guess it’s the only way.”

  She paused again. “You haven’t been here in years. Are you sure…?”

  “Look, if it makes you uncomfortable”

  “That’s not it. I just assumed…”

  I knew better than to tell Gloria her assumptions were wrong. She always interpreted that to mean I thought she was stupid. “I really need a hand here,” I said. “Mind if I bring the negatives over and wait while you do them?”

  She sighed. She sounded relieved, somehow. “No, that’s fine.”

  I got out of the car and went to the front door. She opened it. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a baggy shirt with the tails
flopping. She was barefoot. She seemed to have lost a little weight in appropriate places since the last time I had seen her. I knew better than to mention it to her.

  “Come in, Brady.”

  I went in and took off my topcoat. I started to hang it in the closet in the foyer. Then I hesitated and handed it to her.

  She seemed uncertain what to do with it. She looked sideways at me and grinned. “I was going to hang it in the closet. Where your stuff goes.”

  “That’s what I started to do.”

  We went into the living room. She laid my coat on the sofa. I looked around. None of the furniture looked familiar.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Your hair,” I said. “It’s different.”

  She touched her head. “It’ll look better when the perm grows out a little. I’m starting to get some grays.”

  “It looks good. You look good.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You never used to compliment me. I think I like it.” She touched my cheek with her forefinger. “You look good, too, old man. You’re getting little wrinkles around your eyes. Looks distinguished.”

  “I’m getting big wrinkles all over,” I said.

  “You want a drink or something?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, no. I’d really like to see what’s on these negatives.”

  I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket and handed it to her. She slipped the negatives from their glassine protector and held them up to the light. “These were taken through a long lens,” she said, squinting. “At least a three-hundred-millimeter, I’d say. Maybe five hundred. Very shallow depth of focus. Doesn’t look too sharp on most of them. Well, let’s go see.”

  I followed her down into the basement. When I had lived there, it was what we called a rumpus room. It had been paneled with cheap imitation oak and carpeted with rubberized indoor-outdoor green stuff. The boys kept their toys down there. There had been a small television, which Gloria and I dutifully restricted to Channel 2. Both of our boys, to our confusion, had been hooked on Mr. Rogers.

  Now the paneling was genuine pine. Bookcases lined one wall. Track lighting along the ceiling played selectively on several framed photographs. There was an antique rolltop desk in one corner and a big square butcher-block table. Behind a locked glass-door cabinet were shelves containing Gloria’s cameras and the other tools of her trade. She had accumulated a lot of gear since I had lived there.