"What's the honor?" Harry said, blinking twice.
"I thought it appropriate." Reverend Stottle seated himself, and nodded gratefully as Trish served him coffee in a mug matching Harry's. His eyes admired the airy length of the kitchen and the hanging plants in the bow window. Then he concentrated on Harry. "You don't look well."
"They say I have a heart condition."
"Do you not take care of yourself?"
"If he doesn't, he'll die," Trish said, joining them. "He knows that."
Harry reached into his robe and scratched his chest. "I die, what's it going to be like, Austin? Angels to comfort me? Harps to play my favorite tunes?"
The reverend looked at him sternly. "You'll be deaf and in the dark. And nothing will matter."
"That's not what you told me," Trish said.
"My views shift. Sometimes I think the child we were waits for us." He tasted his coffee. "But I wouldn't count on it."
Harry cracked his knuckles, the sound like a mallet striking a croquet ball. "Tell me, Austin, do we suffer fora purpose? Or is it all for naught?"
"I've been having a problem with that question. I used to think it pleased God to see us endure our tragedies. Now I think it pleases him too much."
Harry did not look amused. Trish, who clearly was, said, "I'm starting to wonder who has the bigger problem. Harry or you?"
"I think God should be held responsible for defective minds and bodies and held accountable for his acts. For what he did to Job and Job's family, he should be drawn and quartered. And for what he did to you, Harry, he should at least be reprimanded."
Harry said, "You don't sound like a minister."
"But I am. A real one. God gave us light but for the most part left us in the dark. Though with some creatures he was forthcoming. I think a cow is born with the knowledge that man will milk her and one day butcher her."
"I don't think you're cheering Harry up," Trish said.
"Nor do I. I'm sorry, Harry. Tell me about your son. Do you see him?"
"He's written me off," Harry said aggressively and grated a hand over his stubble. His eyes were bright from an antidepressant. "I don't know anything about Bobby anymore. I don't even know who he is."
"Would you like me to visit him? Perhaps I can find out."
Trish spoke up fast. "I don't think that would be wonderful."
Reverend Stottle nodded with a sense of frustration. In other people's dramas he was accustomed to a bit role but was in no way reconciled to it. He wanted stardom but would settle for a solid part, his name somewhere on the marquee.
Harry's hands were trembling, which did not escape Trish's notice. A decision had to be made. "Do you need a drink, Harry?"
"Yes," he said.
Feeling the reverend's eyes, she said, "This won't be wonderful either, but I can't refuse him."
The reverend knew a cue when he heard one. "I'll see you another time," he said.
In June she drove to Connecticut to spend two weeks with her friend Gloria Eisner, who lived in a tony neighborhood that rimmed a bird sanctuary. During the first week they wandered twice through the sanctuary with binoculars, played tennis one afternoon, dined every other evening at the country club, and watched the latest video releases, delivery and pick-up provided. Gloria had seen at least twice every Jack Nicholson movie.
"He reminds me of one of my husbands, a real bastard."
"I don't like his looks," Trish said.
"They grow on you."
"I don't like my own." A bodysuit with yellow filigree gave her the look of a goldenrod in bloom. "It'd be great if we could choose our looks. Big catalog with lots of pictures. I'd pick better bones and be a legitimate blonde."
"What's the real problem, Trish?"
"My age."
"It's more than that."
"Then it's everything."
Gloria used the remote to lower the volume of the video, the softer sound giving Jack Nicholson a kinder presence as he caressed Shirley MacLaine. "Sad movie. I always cry, don't you?"
"No."
"You're going back early, aren't you?"
"I've been thinking about it," Trish said.
The next morning they were up by nine. Trish wanted a last stroll through the sanctuary. Focusing the binoculars, she confused a cardinal with a tanager until Gloria corrected her. Gloria pointed out a nuthatch, a sapsucker.
"Harry's brother knows birds. Harry knows droppings. Can you imagine?"
"Strange as it may sound, Trish, I can."
The sun swirled light through the trees. The relentless sound of birds and insects shook the air. The heavy beat of the morning took a toll on Trish.
"I didn't think I'd miss him, but I do."
Gloria gave her a sidelong glance. "How about his brother, do you miss him too?"
"That's an impossible situation. I no longer think about it." She fell behind Gloria as the ground rose and the path narrowed enough to have been made by goats. The woodland began to thin. "How did you do it, Gloria? You've been through three men, three divorces."
"They get easier."
"But a divorce is like a death."
"Then I'll have had plenty of practice when my time comes."
Trish felt a twinge in her back, a weariness in her legs. "All I know is that in my first marriage I wanted nothing more than to be a good wife and mother. I didn't do too well, did I?"
Gloria laughed over her shoulder. "I'm one to judge?"
"Let's turn back," Trish said, stopping in her tracks and consulting her watch.
"Don't you want to go to the top of the hill? You can see the whole town."
"I don't, Gloria. I really don't. I want to leave by noon and be home by three. I want to surprise him."
Holly Pride, the librarian, thought he was asleep. He was slouched in an imitation-leather chair in the reading room, with his head tilted to one side and a copy of Smithsonian in his lap. That was at two-thirty. When she looked in at four he was still there, the only occupant.
At the police station Meg O'Brien took Holly's call. "Slow down," Meg said. "What's the matter with him?"
"I can't wake him. And he smells. I think he had an accident."
"I'll get the ambulance over there. Don't panic, Holly."
Meg summoned the ambulance and then got hold of Chief Morgan, who was eating a slice of hot mince pie at the Blue Bonnet. When Morgan put the phone down, the waitress said, "I'll keep the pie warm for you." He reached the library before the ambulance did.
Holly Pride, alarm stamped into her face, directed him to the reading room and waited well away, near the copy machine, which wasn't working. When he emerged two minutes later, she said, "What's the matter with him?"
"The worst," Morgan said.
He picked up his car behind the town hall and drove to the Heights, to Ben Sawhill's house. No one answered the bell. Then he remembered that Ben and his family were spending a week in Montreal. Which left him no choice. He drove deeper into the Heights, to Trish Becker's house.
She answered the bell at once, giving him no chance to rearrange his face and prepare his words. He said, "I'm Police Chief Morgan."
"I know who you are. Where's Harry?"
"May I come in?"
She didn't move. She blocked the doorway. "If he's dead, don't tell me."
Mr. Grissom had a loose-leaf binder open on his desk, his personal notes on the boys. Dibble was in his office, also the woman Sharon, whose black mini with a lacy hem looked liked underwear. The subject was Bobby Sawhill. Sharon said, "He likes mama talk."
"That's not unusual," Mr. Grissom said. "Most of the younger boys do, and not a few of the older ones."
"All he wants is tit. I don't fuck, I nurse. Leaves me sore. I think I should get paid extra. It's like I'm doing double duty."
"Does he tell you anything?"
"Not much, nothing you'd be interested in."
Mr. Grissom scribbled in the notebook. The notebook was his third in seven years. In retirement
he planned to write a book. So far Dibble was his prize pupil, but Bobby was becoming his most intriguing one. Inside the childishness he discerned the hint of cold intelligence. Turning to Dibble, he said, "How's he doing? Any progress?"
"He's taking Duck's death hard," Dibble said. "When I bring it up he gets funnylike. Doesn't want to talk about it."
"How about his father's death?"
"Didn't seem to bother him."
"I'd say not," Mr. Grissom said, seesawing a silver ballpoint between two fingers. "I could've arranged for him to attend his father's funeral. He refused. He give you any reason?"
"He doesn't like flowers."
"What?"
"That's what he said, he doesn't like flowers."
Sharon glanced at her watch. "I'm on my own time now. You still need me?"
Mr. Grissom smiled warmly, appreciatively. He had tried out all the women in his employ to judge their suitability with the boys. Sharon was his longtime favorite, deserving of more money, but he paid them all the same fee. The fudge in his budget had to be reasonable. "No," he said.
Dibble remained, his manner cool.
"All right," Mr. Grissom said, "what's on your mind?"
"Still goes back to Duck. We all know Ernest did it."
"Ernest is gone. He's ancient history."
"You got him out of here fast."
"It was his time. Believe me, I don't think he's happy where he is. Duck's death was an accident. Let's leave it at that."
Dibble turned his eyes toward a blank wall. His T-shirt commemorated Martin Luther King. His sneakers were top of the line, a recent gift from Mr. Grissom.
Mr. Grissom sighed. "You say it was Ernest. Could we have proved it?"
"We could've tried."
"We'd have accomplished nothing except a scandal. That I don't need." Mr. Grissom got a grip on the silver pen and jotted something in the notebook. "You're my number one boy, Dibble. Don't let me down."
Dibble looked at him directly. "Something you should understand. I'm nobody's boy."
"Of course. You're your own man. Something I've been meaning to ask. Do you think Sawhill is ready for the dormitory?"
"No."
"I thought you'd say that. Sawhill still needs you, huh?" Mr. Grissom smiled slyly. "Or do you need him?"
"You sure we won't get in trouble, Dibs?"
"I got more privileges than you know."
They were sitting in the warm night on brick steps outside the building's main door. Beyond the fences peepers were shrill. Misted over, the moon looked like a wafer of metal covering a hole high up. Bobby Sawhill's eyes were on the stars.
"Do you think he's up there, Dibs?"
"God?"
"Duck."
"Why not? Good a place as any." Dibble gave him an elbow. "You're making me into a liar. I told Grissom you don't talk about him."
"But I think about him. That time I was sick I wanted to give him my watch, but he wouldn't take it. He said he wanted hands to tell him the time."
"You want to give it away, give it to me."
"You want it?"
"I'm kidding you. Keep it."
Bobby's eyes were still lifted. Slowly he lowered them. "Is Ernest going to pay?"
"Grissom says he's paying now, in the joint."
Bobby clenched his knees. Earlier he'd been sick, couldn't keep his dinner down, but he was feeling better now. He was about to speak when the big door behind them swung open and an attendant looked down at them.
"What the fuck are you guys doing out here?" He went by the name of Pete and had a mustache and a beard. Then, in the light from the door, he recognized Dibble and moderated his tone. "Why didn't you say it was you? Make sure the door's locked when you come in."
Dibble said, "How can I get in if the door's locked?"
"Don't be a wise fucker."
They heard the door slam. Bobby smiled, but the smile faded. "When you leave, Dibs, what will happen to me?"
"I got a while yet."
"I know, but when you do."
"You're going to be tough," Dibble said. "You do it right, you're going to be me."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The bulk of Harry Sawhill's estate went to his son and the token remainder to his widow. Ben Sawhill set up trust funds for Bobby, a special one for what he hoped would be Bobby's education, Harvard if possible. He considered selling Harry's house but decided it should be there for Bobby if he wanted it.
"So long as he never lives with us," Belle Sawhill said.
"He won't," Ben said. "Just don't ask me to turn my back on him."
Belle crossed her arms tight under her breasts. "The thought of him coming home petrifies me."
"You come first, you know that. You and the girls."
"I'll tell you who else is scared. 'Irish."
"She has nothing to worry about."
"Tell her that."
After learning that Harry was dead, the first person Trish Becker had called was Gloria Eisner. Standing rigid with one hand in her hair, she said, "He's gone, Gloria. He's pushed off."
"I'm sorry, baby. So sorry for you."
"He might be happy where he is. Who's to say?"
"I'll come up."
"Hurry"
Gloria stayed with Trish through the funeral and two weeks afterward. Then Gloria brought her back with her to Connecticut, the visit considered indefinite. Trish phoned Ben, who promised to look after her house, and she called Belle several times, the two of them closer now than they had been before, with Bobby creeping in and out of the conversations.
"What will you do, Belle?"
"Cross that bridge when I get to it."
Sitting with a wine cooler on the patio, the day nodding off into twilight, Trish said to Gloria, "He wasn't someone I loved heart and soul, not like I did my first husband, but I cared for him. He tried to be good to me, but he was so vulnerable."
"My husbands were all vulnerable to one thing or another, usually other women."
"Harry wasn't that way. Poor Harry. I don't think anyone could have replaced his first wife."
They took more walks through the sanctuary. The air fluttered with pine needles. Colorful birch, maple, and oak spilled leaves. They climbed the hill where they could see the outstretched sky and birds in flight. Trish felt a sharp breeze through her shirt.
"Summer's gone," she said. "It was so swift, so unfair, so much like life."
When the sumac began to lose its blaze and the weather chilled, she said, "I want to go where it's eternally warm. Where I can show my ass on a beach. Where to, Gloria?"
Gloria, sitting sideways on a window seat in the sunniest room, was clipping her toenails. "Anywhere," she said. "As long as it's not Hell."
In Key West, Gloria judged the sun bigger and redder than in any other sky. Setting, performing for a cheering crowd on Mallory Square, it was luridly awesome, as if practicing to end the world. Trish aimed her camera, a Pentax that had belonged to Harry, but decided a picture would capture nothing.
"Poetry might," Gloria said, "but we're not poets."
"What are we?"
"Vagabonds with pocketbooks."
Shopping on Duval Street, Trish bought Christmas gifts to mail to her children. Gloria, childless, bought scenic postcards to write to friends. They dined on yellowtail on the crowded veranda of a restaurant, where Gloria reminisced about her great-grandmother who, according to family legend, had required her personal maid to bathe her after intimacy with her husband.
"She was still alive when I was a kid. I was allowed to kiss her on the cheek if I wiped my mouth first. My mother thought she might leave us something. She didn't."
"Harry left me practically nothing. I'm glad."
"Never turn your nose up at money. It's what gives you options."
They returned to the Casa Marina, the fortress of luxury where they had checked in a month ago, and slept soundly through the warm night and well into the morning. They spent the afternoon on the beach, which was not s
and but crushed coral. The sun was blazing, the sky radiant, and the ocean a mirror without an image. Gloria allowed a young man who'd been flirting with them to rub her bare back with suntan oil but then sent him on his way.
Trish grinned. "Not your type?"
"Darling, he's gay. But he thinks we're rich bitches."
"Aren't we, sort of?"
"No. Rich is never having to worry."
In the evening they returned to Duval Street, which swarmed with tourists and exhibitionists. A man whose clothing consisted of a Panama hat and a bikini bottom edged by them. A heavy woman in the clothes of a child fluttered a fan in their faces. Jostled, Trish said she felt like a tropical fish swimming in the smallest of bowls. They dined again at the restaurant with the veranda, this time on snapper, the catch of the day. Afterward they went to a bar, but the music was raucous and much of the behavior bizarre.
"Not my scene," Trish said. "I feel uncomfortably overage."
"Speak for yourself," Gloria said, but they left.
They returned to the Casa Marina early enough for Trish to take a call from Ben Sawhill, who was handling her financial affairs in his usual fastidious way. "You're spending too much," he said. "You're dipping into capital."
"I'll slow down when I get back."
"Better slow down now. I mean it, Trish."
She let a couple of seconds pass. "I'm glad you're looking after me, Ben."
"I'm simply warning you," he said. "It could become serious."
Putting down the phone, she looked at Gloria and said, "You're right about money."
"Shit," said Gloria. "I'm short too."
Within the week they rented a small house behind Duval Street. A delicate fretwork porch that looked tentative fronted the house, and overhangs hooded the windows. Living next door in a nearly identical house were two middle-aged gay men, who took, an immediate interest in them and invited them over for drinks. Barry, exceedingly handsome, was an artist who painted the human figure in fragments, the limbs adrift. Stirling, quietly distinguished-looking, was a tenured history professor on sabbatical from a university he did not mention. Both had gray hair, Barry more of it.
On the Loose Page 10