Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954)

by Dale, Lisa

  The last of the pink smears of sunset faded behind the big houses across the street. “Well,” Maisie said, “it’s nice to have you down here visiting. You need a break from all that court stuff. A few days in Richmond will do you good.”

  “I wish I could stay longer,” Lauren said.

  “You’re welcome as long as you like. Stay the year. Stay two. Lauren … ” Lauren turned, and Maisie reached across the small balcony for her friend’s hand. “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t go back to Albany at all.”

  The narrow brick alleyway alongside the antiques shop smelled of yeast—and when Will dragged the garbage to the sidewalk for tomorrow’s morning pickup, he knew why. Two days ago, he’d bought Arlen a thirty-pack of beer. Nothing fancy—just the same kind of pilsner served at picnics and dive bars. Now the whole pack was gone.

  Will headed back into the shop, then up the stairs that led to the apartment where Arlen was staying. He knocked and entered. Arlen looked up from his perch at the window. The TV was muted but on.

  “I’m heading out. You need anything?” Will asked.

  “Naw. I’m fine.”

  “You should make a grocery list. Otherwise I have to guess.”

  “Just don’t get anything I have to assemble myself. Those little cups of macaroni were good. Fast.”

  Will nodded, again struck by how much Arlen was like a teenager—except that he was different from the one Will had known. The last time Will had seen the Arlen he knew, the person he recognized on some fundamental level, Arlen had been a newlywed. He’d saved up a little money, and he’d been able to plan a short trip to Albany to visit a sick cousin. Almost a decade later, Arlen was finally back in Virginia, but Will had the sense that he didn’t consider himself to be home.

  When they were kids, living in the backcountry, they’d liked to head down to the old flat brook, fishing rods balanced on their shoulders like muskets, coolers of pilfered beer in their free hands. The cicadas would wheeze in the treetops, the creek would come alive with water bugs, and they would sit feeling alone and safe until the sun went down.

  Their home lives weren’t bad, exactly, but in a town with more people than jobs, more bars than churches, they didn’t have what outsiders called “advantages.” Arlen’s mom had been a widow; his dad had died from emphysema after fifty years of working the mines in the summer and the fields in the fall. His mother managed to pay the mortgage, but not much else, by holding an illegal day care in her living room.

  Will’s situation had its challenges too. His dad was gone as well; he was a trucker whose only reason for coming home seemed to be to get Will’s mom pregnant. She’d just had her sixth baby when his father took to the road and didn’t come home again. Will’s mom did her best. The government helped. It was almost enough to get by.

  Will found refuge in his friendship with Arlen. In the halls of their high school, they were joined at the hip. Neither had nice clothes. Neither was popular with girls. But together, they talked about everything, sitting on the boulders beside the creek. Both of them had wanted something better, and mostly what they wanted was money. They swatted at mosquitoes and dreamed that they would start some business together and get out of town.

  But these days, even when Will was beside him, Arlen seemed to consider himself alone.

  “All right,” Will said. “Long as you don’t need anything. You got a key.”

  Arlen turned back to the window. “So long.”

  Will walked down the stairs to the first floor, the old boards creaking heavily under his weight. Twice today Arlen had scared him: First when the strength and force of his anger at Lauren Matthews had made Will’s skin crawl. And second when Will realized that Arlen couldn’t go outside.

  Will wanted to know his old friend again. But how could he when Arlen wouldn’t let him? For one week Arlen had been out of prison. Will had searched for signs of his old friend in this new guy’s face, but Arlen remained a stranger.

  He shoved his hand into the pocket of his cargo shorts, where Lauren Matthews’s note had been folded into a square. And he thought about her, much more than he meant to, as he let the Virginia roads take him out of Richmond proper, take him home.

  Lesson Three: Learning to pay attention to personal appearance is a vital first step to truly seeing people. How we dress or don’t dress, how we style our hair or don’t style it, the ways that we alter our bodies (weight loss, plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings)—each element of our personal style is a choice—an elective trait—and each choice is a proclamation to the world that says, This is who I am.

  But don’t think that because a woman wears no jewelry, she’s poor (she may be allergic to certain metals, or not like the feel of it on her skin). And don’t think that because a man is well dressed, he must be rich (men who wear the best suits may go home to rooms full of old furniture and curtainless windows). The image a person projects is only the beginning of your search for clues.

  CHAPTER 3

  On the evening of Arlen Fieldstone’s conviction, Lauren and her colleagues treated themselves to a night of celebrating. Lauren had taken on the Fieldstone trial after a freak accident—when both the district attorney and his assistant had been injured together in the same car crash as they went out together for their lunch break. Lauren—with all the exuberant courage of a young woman who meant to get a foot in the door come hell or high water—was called to stand in until one or both of her bosses recovered. She hadn’t needed to hear the gossip to know what the legal community was whispering about her. There was talk of finding a replacement. But she rallied, worked under her bosses’ supervision, and then, in front of national television syndicates and politicians everywhere, she made the case her own. When she won, she wasn’t lauded like some winning hometown quarterback; she was hailed as the whole team.

  We, the jury …

  On the night of the verdict her colleagues joked about carrying her through the streets on their shoulders. And though they didn’t lift her, the suggestion was enough to make her high. She pictured it: streamers and confetti fluttering earthward as they paraded through the concrete caverns of downtown Albany—the scene no less real because it was imagined. They rolled into the bar, the usual bar, as if they owned every napkin, coaster, and glass. At some point Lauren lost track of the number of drinks thrust into her hand.

  Burt Sternfeld, who was a partner in a private firm of lawyers and jury consultants, gripped her arm. A prodigy, he’d called her. She was a prodigy. She’d heard the word before—when she’d graduated early from her private high school, when she got an accelerated BS, when she had her JD at twenty-two. But it wasn’t until Burt said prodigy to her that she thought, Maybe. He’d put an arm around her shoulders as if she—and not her father—had been golfing with him for a decade, and he said he’d heard a rumor about her interest in jury consulting. He asked her to make an appointment with his secretary. She nodded politely. Her toes in her shoes curled so hard they hurt.

  All of Albany had turned its eyes on her. The bartender gave her his number—an odd but delightful occurrence given that she’d seen the man at least a dozen times before and he’d never flirted with her until that night. And Juliette Peterson, the secretary who always gave her such a hard time when Lauren asked for copies, swallowed her usual irritability and said congratulations. Everyone knew Lauren was not just another wannabe. She was the real thing.

  … find the defendant …

  Lauren’s victory was one for the history books, a victory that almost hadn’t happened. She’d stood trial in her own way, and she’d won. After the verdict had been announced, Senator Raimez had found her in a quiet corner of the courthouse. His eyes were full of tears and he held her hand somberly—not quite a handshake but an embracing.

  “Nothing changes the fact that my wife is dead,” he’d said to her, right in front of the cameras. “But justice lives on.”

  … guilty as charged …

  That night in her bed, her head swimmin
g with alcohol and compliments, her legs exhausted because she was not yet used to working a full day in high heels, she saw flashes of the future before her. Her proud parents (she would buy a house to rival theirs). The wardrobe she would have when she got her new job at Burt’s firm (which was just about in the bag). The respect she would command when she walked the marble corridors across the country. She fell asleep half dreaming that a great road was becoming clear before her—a path that she herself had cleared even though it stretched far out in front of her, into places she hadn’t yet been.

  If she thought of Arlen Fieldstone again—as a person rather than an event—it was only in passing. The Fieldstone conviction was washed away on a tide of vodka, congratulations, and then the rush of wildly successful years.

  From his little apartment—which he’d come to think of as a prison tower—Arlen had studied the mechanics of the antiques trade. It seemed simple enough. Will lugged armfuls of junk into the shop; strangers lugged them right back out. Rusty tricycles, advertisements for gasoline, plastic superheroes still in their boxes … The place was an ant farm for pack rats. Yesterday, Will had wheeled in a cigarette vending machine that, far as Arlen could tell, had no hope of being useful again except for target practice. But Will had whooped and smiled like it was Christmas day over the thing, even as flakes of rust were falling from it like snow.

  Now, Arlen stood in the shop. Will had put him in charge—walking out the door even while Arlen argued. “Back in twenty,” he’d said.

  That had been an hour ago. But luckily, nobody had come in. Arlen was alone with empty fish tanks and costume jewelry and pull-string dolls. Over the counter, Will had hung a sign: Work Is for People Who Don’t Collect Antiques.

  Arlen wondered: What did Will see in all this junk—this stuff that smelled so bad, coated in dirt and rust? He’d thought Will had meant to get all rich and upstanding when he grew up. Instead, he collected old crap.

  He noticed, for the first time, a shelf within eyesight of the office and a sign that had curled in at the edges:

  NOT FOR SALE.

  AND NO, YOU CAN’T TALK ME DOWN.

  Arlen peered closer. A cast-iron dog. Tickets to a Redskins game. Keys and a replica Ford truck. Will’s old Ford. And a whistle that Arlen himself had whittled one day with his very own hands.

  He stepped back.

  These were Will’s things. His personal things. Arlen reached out, thinking of what it would be like to hold that old whistle—he could remember sitting on his mother’s porch when he’d made it, stopping now and again to watch the sky change and the robins peck at the dirt. But then something dark twisted around in his belly and stopped him from picking it up.

  “Hellooo?”

  He jumped clear out of his skin. He hadn’t heard the front door open.

  A customer.

  He pulled his shoulders back and walked slowly, slowly to the front of the store, all his senses alert and his brain screaming and telling him to just slink away before anyone knew he was there. He emerged from behind a tall bookcase, and there in the middle of the entryway, standing and looking befuddled, was a middle-aged white woman. Her shin-length skirt was printed with tiny green and white flowers, and her blouse was buttoned down over giant breasts. She wore an old visor over her tufts of coppery hair.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said.

  Arlen managed to nod. He couldn’t get enough air.

  The woman tipped her head and smiled. “Hot enough for you?”

  He tried to speak, but the words got stuck, so he made a sound to show he agreed.

  “Well, then,” the woman said, clasping a shiny red purse before her in two hands. “It’s my husband’s birthday next week and he collects bottles. The little blue ones. I’m wondering if you have any.”

  Arlen didn’t have to think long about the answer. He’d seen a few blue bottles on a shelf in the middle of the heap that was Will’s store. He gestured for the woman to follow him. And to his surprise, she did. No hesitating because he was leading her back into the maze of junk, away from the door. No saying, I’ll come back another time. She just followed him. Totally unafraid. He realized she had no idea who he was.

  At Will’s glass display—which was a few shelves of dusty vases and bowls—she stood for a moment, looking at the jewel-blue apothecary bottles. She held them up one at a time. They caught the light and shimmered like tropical fish. On the shelf, they’d been lifeless; they came alive in her hand.

  He clasped his fingers together in front of him. He missed women—boy, did he ever miss them. This woman smelled like an imitation of the lilac bushes that bloomed beside his mother’s clothesline. In the spring, his shirts and coveralls used to pick up a bit of the scent. The smell of the outside world was one of the things he’d missed most in prison; he’d spent ages breathing filtered, temperature-controlled air. But Richmond, it was a feast for the nostrils. He couldn’t help himself; he leaned toward the woman, her faint cloud of lilac so thick she almost seemed to be in a haze of purple, and he breathed in.

  “I’ll take this one. And— Oh!”

  She turned her head. Arlen straightened up, caught. The woman’s eyes grew wide under her white visor, and her mouth was open so far that he saw she had lipstick on her teeth. He knew enough not to apologize, because if he said he was sorry he would have to explain himself. He wasn’t certain she knew why he was leaning toward her; she knew only that he was.

  She turned bright berry pink and held up a few more bottles for Arlen’s inspection. “I’ll, um, I’ll take these as well.”

  Arlen nodded. She hurried to the front of the store a little more quickly than she’d walked into it, and Arlen followed. Behind the register the cashbox was locked up, but Will had shown Arlen where he hid the key. Arlen made change for the woman, then carefully rolled each blue bottle in brown paper and secured it with a bit of tape. And it felt good—so good—to be packing them up and handing them off. He liked the idea that the woman thought he did this all the time.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You have a nice day now.”

  “Same to you,” he said.

  And he realized they were the first words he’d spoken to anyone but Will since he’d been freed.

  Lauren and Maisie had breakfast in the sun-filled kitchen—hazelnut coffee, toast, and sliced melon. Maisie’s sleep-rumpled hair and foggy eyes reminded Lauren of mornings spent on the beds of their dorm room, chasing mild hangovers with cups of orange juice and analysis of the night before. Before Maisie left for work, Lauren thanked her and gave her a long hug in the doorway. If Lauren connected with Arlen today, she would leave right away.

  With the house empty, Lauren dialed her brother, tucked her cell phone against her shoulder, and washed the dishes. Jonah’s phone rang and rang. She was just about to disconnect when her niece picked up.

  “Hello, this is Dakota speaking.”

  “Kota! It’s Aunt Lauren.”

  “Hi!”

  “How are you?” Lauren asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Doing anything fun?” Lauren asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Playing.”

  Lauren put a mug into the drying rack. She’d fallen head over heels for her newborn niece when Dakota had burped on her shoulder and ruined her favorite shirt. Lauren wanted to keep her talking, just a little more.

  “What are you playing?” Lauren asked.

  Dakota made a good effort at conversation. She was trying—Lauren could tell. But the fact remained that human beings weren’t designed to talk to each other via screens and fiber optics. Adults learned to work around the relative “blindness” of cell phone calls and text messages. But Dakota had yet to develop the proper brain muscles and attention span for artificial communication. She just wanted to get off the phone.

  Eventually, Lauren let her go and her brother got on the line.

  “Hey, La
ure! Checking up on me?”

  “Just calling to get the latest from my favorite stay-at-home dad.”

  “Dakota’s driving me crazy,” he said. “She just learned about tap dancing. Now she wants to be a Rockette.”

  “I thought she wanted to be president.”

  “That was last week,” he said.

  Lauren smiled and adjusted the phone on her shoulder, careful not to get suds on her cell. Jonah and his wife—who had been his nurse when he’d been incarcerated—had managed to work out a good life for themselves despite Jonah’s early setbacks. He didn’t have a good track record when it came to holding down a job, but he was an amazing father. Some people said he was immature; Lauren liked to think that he’d simply never lost his innocence.

  “So did you see Arlen?”

  “I’m working on it.” She turned off the faucet and put down the dish sponge. “I have to be honest. It didn’t occur to me until I got down here that Arlen might not want to talk to me.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “I figured he would want to see me. You know, for closure.”

  “Did you at least get a look at him?”

  “No.”

  “Let me know when you do. We’ll take him apart—figure out a plan. We’ll win him over yet!”

  Lauren opened a cabinet and grabbed a clean dishcloth to dry the wet plates. “What would you do if the person who put you in jail showed up at your house and asked you to forgive her?”

  “It’s different with me.”

  “But what would you do? If you were Arlen?”

  “Let’s review. What do we know about him?”

  “What I remember most is how quiet he was,” Lauren said. “Soft-spoken. People would have called him a man of few words. But I don’t think the quietness was because he lacked things to say.”

  “Right. He’s quiet not because he doesn’t have opinions, but he feels like he doesn’t need to express them. His opinions belong to him and him alone. So keeping quiet becomes a kind of power, in a way.”

  “Maybe his only power, given the situation.”