Strangers in Budapest

by Jessica Keener

  Dear Birth Mother,

  We wanted to share these three photos with you and to let you know how blessed we feel because of you. Our son is healthy, smart, beautiful, happy. There is no greater gift of life and love than what you have given us, no words to express the depth of gratitude in our hearts.

  Leo sat in the jogger, flipping pages of his book on shapes and colors. Will stayed home to review Bernardo’s contract. He told Bernardo he’d let him know either way at the end of ten days.

  She was nervous but determined about visiting Edward one more time this afternoon, once Leo was asleep. Again, she found herself resorting to secrecy. She didn’t mention her intention to Will.

  Sleep-deprived, she wished she could push the hours ahead, see Edward now, but it was only nine o’clock, too early.

  Annie and Will had written the letter for Leo’s birth mother days ago, rearranging the words again and again. It wasn’t possible to get them right. Giving up a child, handing him over to a strange couple as some kind of gift? The enormity of that act of courage was too large for words. But that was what it was: an act of courage, and faith.

  Rose would forward the envelope to Calloway, who would send it on to the agency in North Carolina, which would pass it on to Leo’s birth mother. Annie didn’t know where his birth mother lived. Had she moved? What was her life like this whole last year? She would be twenty-one now.

  Calloway didn’t have the authority to do this, but she felt sure he would open the envelope before sending it on, his long, thin fingers unable to resist stroking the edges of Leo’s photos.

  At the post office, the line ahead of her did not move. The concept of service was a joke in this Eastern European country. None of the postal workers made eye contact with customers, or hurried or made an extra effort. The old communist posturing still ruled in a faded glory kind of way. Hilarious to watch when she didn’t need to be anywhere, infuriating when she did. Today she had no place to go, only time to kill until evening when Agnes, the sex escort or companion—my God, was she living a crazy dream?—would pick them up at seven o’clock to go to Stephen’s flat. Will said to think of Agnes as their chauffeur.

  Leo kicked the metal footplate on the jogger. The narrow, windowless lobby with dusty floors smelled of human sweat and ink. Two weak fans barely stirred the air. At this rate, it would take an hour to mail one letter.

  Leo kicked again. “Up, Momma,” he said, stretching his arms toward her. An elderly woman near the front of the line motioned for Annie to come forward.

  “Kicsi baba,” the woman said. She pointed to Leo. A few others in line nodded in agreement.

  “Köszönöm,” she said. “Thank you.” Annie moved to the front of the line, just as she had at the airport when she first arrived.

  She gave her envelope to the postal worker, paid for the stamps, and smiled to the nice people in line on her way to the exit door. Outside, an explosion of sunshine disoriented her. She raised her arm to block the light—like that day, like her dream last night that was oh, so unbearably familiar to her: Tracy zigzagging on her bike, Greg aiming the ball, an aluminum flash like sunlight off the car, metal clanging, and Tracy tipping, sliding. Their mother’s summer robe fluttering across the driveway. Tracy on the ground, quiet and still. The vision would never go away.

  Leo put his hands over his eyes and started crying.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said, turning the jogger so that the sun was at his back.

  She headed to the Parliament. Leo could play in the garden there and she had a hunch that the Roma sisters might be there, suspecting it was their regular turf. She had a peculiar curiosity to know where these children lived, as if knowing where they slept at night might convince her they would be okay.

  At the Parliament, she sat on a bench watching Leo as he crisscrossed the narrow walkways between hedges of roses.

  “Ower,” Leo said.

  Her hunch was soon realized: a thin-limbed girl jumped out from behind a hedge and handed her son a flower. A second girl appeared. Thrilled, Annie immediately recognized the two sisters and walked over to them.

  “Do you speak English?” Annie spoke slowly.

  Leo giggled.

  The taller one shook her head and held out her hand for money. The younger girl copied her sister, shaking her open palm. They both had beautiful teeth, broad and white, the younger one with a small gap where a tooth was coming in on the side.

  “Ow-er,” Leo said, showing Annie the rose.

  The older sister giggled and pushed her hand toward Annie again.

  Annie took Leo’s hand instead and said, “Name? What is your name?” She repeated the question in Hungarian, and waited for the Roma girls to decide whether to tell her. If she did, Annie would reward them with a dollar.

  “Sigh-ra.”

  “Sigh-ra,” Annie repeated.

  The girl nodded, her long skirt sweeping her ankles. The younger one smiled.

  “Sigh-ra. This is Leo. I’m Annie.”

  Sigh-ra opened her palm and shook it.

  “Sit here. Itt.” Annie pointed to the bench and moved toward it, but Sigh-ra wasn’t interested. She shook her palm again, her fawn-colored skin smooth and weathered. Annie gave both girls a dollar, wanting them to stay. Instead, Sigh-ra grabbed her sister’s hand and began to skip away as if she knew she had won over Annie. Leo was smitten and started after them, shrieking, so Annie scooped him up into the jogger, snapped the safety belt in place, and followed them.

  Sigh-ra turned it into a game of twirling, then stopping, the younger one in sync with her sister. Annie couldn’t resist keeping pace, gently pursuing them, as if she were chasing an alternate reality of Tracy and herself in another life, another dream.

  Leo laughed at every silly gesture that Sigh-ra made with her mouth and hands. Equally charmed by him, the sisters slowed and walked alongside him, just beyond his reach, enthralled by Leo’s giggling and unfiltered delight. Listening to the children’s laughter, Annie felt happy, too. Happier than she’d felt in months.

  They turned down a boulevard, past a marketplace and narrower streets that look unkempt, with cracked sidewalks and buildings black with soot. Annie couldn’t wait to see where the Roma girls lived, even as another part of her felt cautious, possibly rash for wandering into this unfamiliar section of town. So many people had warned her about Gypsies. Sigh-ra and her sister were children. Where was the harm? It was the middle of the day. People were out.

  She followed the sisters to a grid of streets with few trees. Finally, the girls turned into an old building with a courtyard filled with a dozen dark-skinned children playing a game with stones. Barefoot toddlers. Children with dirt-dusted limbs. Mothers in skirts, like the woman who sold Annie a flower at Luigi’s. Maybe this was where Sandor lived. Odd to think, after all these months Annie still didn’t know.

  A strange feeling of disquietude filled the courtyard. Unsure what to do, Annie quickly handed Sigh-ra an American twenty-dollar bill, the equivalent of a whole week’s worth of groceries. A windfall of money. Was it wrong? She didn’t know. Leo reached out his arms to get out of the jogger, wanting Annie to unbuckle him so he could follow the girls who had run into the middle of the large group of Roma children, all of whom had stopped what they were doing to stare. Now all the mothers and children in the courtyard—there were no men—had stopped to face her, lined up in a wall of defense.

  “Nem,” a woman called to Sigh-ra, shaking her finger at Annie, speaking in a rapid sing song chain of sentences Annie couldn’t understand.

  “We have to go, hon.” She waved to the two sisters and guided the jogger back to the street, away from the women and children. Annie didn’t need to understand their words. It was obvious that she and her son were not welcome there.

  Twenty-nine

  A persistent tapping on the door woke him. It wasn’t Ivan’s day.

  “Mr. Weiss. It’s Annie.”

  He lumbered to the door and unchained it, letting her in.
/>   “What are you doing here? I told you—”

  “Yes. I know,” Annie said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Before I go to Stephen’s tonight, you need to tell me the whole story.”

  “Van. I told you his name is Van. You have his address?”

  “No. We’re getting picked up. I have his phone number.”

  He slid the chain back on the track.

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  And then he understood.

  “You still don’t believe me.”

  He scanned the room, taking in the dark curtains and the squint of light coming through, wondering when it would ever end. Why could he see things that others could not? He turned to her again. She stood taller, her shoulders in perfect alignment, and he could see she was intent, determined. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, which made her face look more angular.

  “You accused a man of murder, Edward. I needed to talk to you about this in person, not on the phone.”

  He watched her inhale deeply, waited to hear what other excuse she would give him. Everyone had an excuse.

  “You never told me what happened. No bullshit. Isn’t that what you said? You owe me that.”

  She slid her hand into her back pocket and pulled out the business card.

  “Here. You see? It’s all here.”

  She pushed the card into his hand and he read the words for himself:

  STEPHEN HÁZY

  c. 36 1 438-5629

  “Is this number real? Have you called him?”

  His question made her pause. “No. I haven’t. But he called Will, and Will’s old boss has been in touch with him, and another American businessman from General Electric whom Will knows.”

  “I can call him right now.” Edward reached for his cell phone and sat back down in the depression on the couch where he had fallen asleep after lunch.

  “No, wait,” Annie said. “What are you going to say? What if he asks how you got the number?”

  “I won’t tell him. I want to be sure it’s him. If he picks up, I’ll recognize his voice and I’ll hang up.”

  “But your number and name will show up on his phone.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  Edward began to punch in the numbers.

  “But I do. Stop! He’ll want to know how you got his number. Please think this through.”

  Edward stopped. She was right. He needed to remain calm with her. He didn’t want to put her and Leo in further jeopardy. Yet reason kept dissolving in his head, the vortex of his emotions sucking everything into a blinding hole. As he clutched the business card, the tangible sensation of his daughter’s killer in his hand made his chest hurt. He had a suffocating urge to dial Van’s number, just once, so he could breathe. Then he had a thought.

  “How about if you call him and ask for his address?”

  “I never call him.”

  “Tell him you want the address to give to your babysitter. I’d think you’d want to do that, anyway, right? I’m not the bad guy, Annie. If someone murdered your son, what would you do? Can you answer that question? Of course you can’t.”

  She took her phone and dialed the number, holding the phone between them so he could hear.

  “You’ve reached Stephen Házy. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Have a good day.” The message continued in Hungarian and then the voice mail beeped. It was Howard. No doubt about it.

  Annie spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “Hi, Stephen. It’s Annie. We’re looking forward to seeing you tonight. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving me a quick call. I need your address to give to our babysitter. Thanks. Bye. See you soon.”

  She hung up.

  “Van calling himself Stephen,” Edward said, feeling an urge to spit. “Does he have your number? You didn’t leave it with him.”

  “Yes. He has it.” She pushed a stray hair off her face and looked hard at him. “My name and number will show up on his ID. And he called Will at the police station, remember? I told you about that. You don’t trust anyone, do you? I came here in earnest, Edward. I need to understand what is going on.”

  Again, he heard Sylvia telling him to lower his voice.

  “My daughter—Deborah—had a habit of picking losers.”

  “What do you mean by losers?” Annie asked, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.

  “Drug addicts. Hippie types. Boys who couldn’t hold down jobs. Van was one more in a long line of them. His father committed suicide when he was a kid—a six-year-old kid. Said he heard the gunshot and found him. That tragedy was Van’s calling card.”

  “I know about the suicide. He told me when we ran into each other. But he didn’t tell me that he found his father. That is tragic. God, that’s unthinkable,” Annie said, taking hold of her ponytail and pulling on it. “You can see that, can’t you?”

  “Ran into him again?” he said, ignoring her question. He refused to get sucked into the quicksand of Van’s victimhood. He was living with his own god-awful tragedies.

  “I told you about this. I was coming to see you. He was waiting for a client. At the end of your street.”

  “And do you really believe he was waiting for a client?”

  “I know he was. I saw the client. A man. They walked off together.”

  “You don’t think it’s an odd coincidence that he ran into you near my street?”

  She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “How did you meet him the first time?” Edward asked.

  “At Luigi’s. It’s where all the American expats go for Italian food. Will and I go there a lot. We met Stephen the day we met you.” She bent her head away from him, thinking.

  “Another coincidence?” Edward said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I think he was already at the restaurant when we arrived, but I can’t say for sure. The restaurant isn’t far from here. A business associate of Will’s—someone from GE was having lunch with Stephen . . . Van, but now I don’t know for certain. Maybe they were just having coffee. I don’t know. The GE man introduced us. He said Stephen was working as a translator. Stephen gave us his card—that one,” she said, pointing to the card in Edward’s hand. “He offered to help. He was friendly. Nice, like you said. He called Will and showed up at the police station after Will’s wallet was stolen.”

  Edward shook his head at the irony of it. “And how did he know what police station to meet you at?”

  “Will probably told him when Stephen called to see if he could help. Will told him not to bother.”

  “I’d say it was another funny coincidence. Maybe he was following you. Did you consider that?” Edward asked.

  “No. Of course I didn’t. Why would he do that?”

  She looked at the curtained windows.

  “Maybe I should leave.”

  “Don’t you see? That’s how he operates. He helps. He slides in there like he did with Deborah. Am I right? Don’t you see?” Edward stabbed the air with his finger. “Always an excuse. Bad childhoods. Victims. Tragedies. Who hasn’t experienced something unforgivable? We’re all victims of life.”

  “Maybe he came here to rectify his father’s death,” Annie said. “I’m not making an excuse for him. I’m just trying to understand.”

  “You think so? And what about my daughter’s death? Who rectifies that? Why did you come here, Annie? I’ll tell you why. You don’t believe me.” Edward readjusted his hip. His back ached. He didn’t have the energy to explain himself to her. He was done with explaining. He had Van’s phone number. “Whether you believe me is inconsequential, you understand? I know what I know.” He drew in a long breath, surprised by how much effort it took.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you,” Annie said, raising her voice. She straightened her back in defense. “I’m confused. You’re telling me I’m in danger. You said he murdered your daughter. Now you’re
suggesting he’s following me. I deserve to know the full story. You know I do.”

  He heard Sylvia telling him to calm down. Don’t raise your voice, Edward. You scare people.

  Edward remembered the day he met Van at Deborah’s apartment in Boston.

  “You want the full story? My daughter lived in a basement in Boston. A six-hundred-and-thirty-three-square-foot condo. Deborah called it a garden apartment. I gave her the down payment. If I hadn’t . . .” He clenched his jaw. “If I hadn’t helped her purchase that place, she would have come home. Van never would have followed her.”

  “You wanted to help her,” Annie said.

  Edward waved his hands. “Our house had too many stairs. Her MS had gotten worse. She was living in a wheelchair. She insisted on being independent.”

  “She sounds like you,” Annie said. “What was Van doing?”

  “Popping her pills, using her. What’s he doing now?”

  “He’s a translator.”

  “So he says. Did he tell you he was living off her money? Did he tell you that?”

  She leaned back, then leaned toward him again.

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “That’s right. As soon as Deborah moved into her condo, he moved in with her. Next thing, they’re married. A year later, she’s dead. Know what her death certificate says? ‘Asphyxia, multiple sclerosis.’ It doesn’t say opioid overdose. You understand? Insurance doesn’t pay for overdoses. He did his research. He was careful to do it right.”

  Edward felt light-headed, the knot of rage pressing against his ribs. A truck honked long and loud outside. But when he looked at Annie’s worried and confused face, he questioned whether she had the capacity to believe Van could murder someone.

  He pushed himself to keep talking. “Translator? What’s he translating?”

  “He goes to business meetings. That’s why he was at the breakfast yesterday.”

  Edward swallowed. “Did you see his eyes, Annie? My wife didn’t want to believe me either. Can you blame her? Who wants to believe their daughter’s been murdered by their son-in-law?” He sat up. “My daughter Nan—she’s on the fence. She won’t say either way. My friends in Florida tell me I’m grieving. Give it time, they say. What time?”