“Dock this thing back at Jefferson Street,” Sam told Turner. “When you can, get on the air and have a car pick up Markowitz and bring him to us. We won’t unload until he shows up. I’m going to bring Fisher in here.”
Turner raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“I thought you were going to leave him outside.”
“I changed my mind.”
“He say anything?” Turner asked.
“Would you?”
Turner’s response was not hard to understand. He wouldn’t say anything in a million years.
“Do you want me to go with you, Sam?” Katherine’s voice was the only soothing sound he had heard all night.
“It might be a good idea,” Turner said. “Damn nasty out there.”
“It is,” Sam said as he opened the cabin door and looked out to the empty deck. “It surely is.”
Chapter 39
Maria looked at the photographs in her lap. The one of mother and baby was in a gold metal frame. It had traveled all the way from Alaska to the final few blocks in Seattle. The other photograph had traveled just as far, but it had no frame. It had been preserved inside the poems, concealed beneath winter clothes, taken out when she was alone. To her but only to her, the two pictures belonged together.
When the car stopped, Maria looked up from the photographs. She looked toward the house that was on her side of the car and saw his framed silhouette inside the door.
“Okay, kiddo,” Katherine said. “You’re on your own.”
Maria stepped out of the car in her freshly ironed pink dress. She stood by herself in the street as Katherine drove away. Katherine had not even taken the car out of gear. She stepped on the brakes to let Maria out and then drove off. Katherine seemed to think there was only one way to do this. Maria had thought of a hundred ways, a thousand ways.
Sam stepped out the door and his head turned to follow Katherine’s car. He looked at Maria standing in the street in her pink dress. She should have worn something else. He was already coming toward her. She had to move. She had to keep her head up.
“Is she mad at me?” he asked as Maria walked forward to meet him. “She sure sounded strange on the phone.”
Until this moment Maria doubted he had even looked at her. He was concerned about Katherine leaving and not about her staying. She should have picked her own time and her own way. She should have thought about it more.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as his eyes focused on her face. “Is there something wrong?”
“She said I should show you these.” Maria extended her hand so that he would take the photographs.
He took them but didn’t look at them.
“Did something happen?” he asked.
How could she tell him all that happened? It was not fair for Katherine to leave.
He finally understood that he was to look at the photographs. He separated them so that he held one in each hand. She watched his eyes.
“My god, where did you get these?” he asked.
Finally there was a question she could answer. “From my mother,” she said. Her voice seemed to come from someplace else. “That’s a picture of her and me when I was little.” She touched the metal frame in his hand.
He looked at the photograph she had touched, then at the other. He didn’t put them together. “Gloria was your mother?”
“Yes.”
He had to understand soon.
“I knew I had seen you somewhere.”
“You don’t understand, do you?”
“Understand?”
She shook her head. She was angry that it had to be so hard—and afraid. She clenched her fists. If she squeezed hard enough the tears would not come. She saw him move the photographs into one hand and carefully touch her arm with the other.
“Understand what?” he asked softly.
“I never should have come.” She looked around. There was nothing familiar around her—no place to go.
“Yes, you should have,” he said as he pressed her arm to let her know that he was there, a friend who would help. “But I don’t understand, Maria.”
She looked at him, took a deep breath, and pushed out the long-feared words.
“You’re my father.”
He stood frozen like a block of ice that words could not penetrate. There was only one word that meant anything. If he didn’t hear that word, she would leave, pink dress and all. She would walk away and never use the word again. He had to decide. He had to decide now.
“That summer?” he asked.
She nodded, but turned away from him until he touched her chin with his hand and brought her eyes around.
“Gloria never told me.”
She closed her eyes. Her mother had not told him. Her daughter, his daughter, had. His hand left her face and she stood untouched. She had feared this moment her whole life. She had feared this nightmare of being forever untouched. She opened her eyes, but this time her nightmare would not pass with open eyes.
“Maria,” he whispered.
She felt his arms. They encircled her, pulled her toward him, and pressed her face against his chest so hard that the stitches over her eye hurt from the force. She didn’t care about that pain. Her arms found a way around him and returned the embrace. He continued to hold her and didn’t let go. When she understood he was not letting go, she began to cry. This time, she didn’t mind because he was crying, too.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeated.
From all that she had imagined, she had never imagined this. She felt as if she had left the ground and was soaring, too light for gravity. Katherine had been right after all, but not about the dress. He had not even seen the dress. There were a thousand things she wanted to know, she wanted to learn them all now, and yet she didn’t want this embrace to end.
“Well, now,” he said and eased the pressure of his arms. Then he released them altogether. He leaned back and down and wondered at her face. “Well, now. We had better go inside. I think we have some catching up to do.”
He guided her to the living room and they sat down together on the couch. He patted her hands as though to measure the distance between them and touched her face with his fingertips. First he touched her cheek and then the bruise beside her eye.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not much.”
He had held the photographs in his left hand through all their motions and now looked to them for help.
“I have to admit I don’t know where to begin.” He put the photographs on the table in front of the couch.
“I know,” she said, actually knowing what to do for the first time. She spoke lines from a poem she had memorized long before she understood what they meant.
I am reminded of northern light
and soft, bare footsteps on heavy planks,
and the smell of fish in her hair,
and love that has been lost
when the sun falls too early behind June mountains.
Sunlight, high overhead, was reflected on drops that gathered on the lids of his eyes. They balanced there, at capacity, but too few to break over.
“I wish I had said that better.”
“I like the way you said it.”
“Where did you ever find that poem?”
“I’ve had the book since I was little. My mother gave it to me.”
“How did she get it?”
“Kind of roundabout as I remember.”
“Why didn’t she say something? Why didn’t she find me?”
“Why didn’t you find her?”
“That’s a better question—a much better question. If I had known about you, I would have.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted you to come for that reason.”
“I guess not.”
“But why didn’t you?”
“Oh, Maria,” he said. “How do I explain that? I was eighteen years old, just like you. I didn’t know anything about love except that it was fine when you had it. I thought it wo
uld go away and then come back again when I was ready. I thought I should get on with my life—see the world, accomplish something—whatever we do when we go on with it. I was afraid.”
“Because she was Indian?”
“That had something to do with it—more than I would like to admit. I don’t think it would, now, when I look at you. You’re so much like her.”
“I wish I could remember more about her,” she said. Her body rocked back as though she had remembered bad news and forward again as she bit the corner of her lower lip. “I’m afraid I’m going to forget everything.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Sam said as he briefly touched the top of her hands.
“But I do,” she insisted. “After she died I used to pretend she was still with me. I would talk to her. I would ask her questions and she would answer me. I can’t always hear her anymore.”
One tear from each eye broke over and left two tracks down her face. That wasn’t what she wanted. She roughly brushed off the bottom of the tracks with a swipe of her fist.
“Her voice was deep,” he said. “It must have formed way down inside her,” and he patted his chest. “From her heart, I think. When she talked, she always looked like she knew something about you, something funny, some joke, but it wasn’t the kind that you worried about. You wanted to know what it was that made her smile. She almost always smiled when she talked. When she laughed, her cheeks would rise and get in the way of her eyes. There was something hidden there, in her eyes—something soft, something kind.” He paused a moment to collect his voice, and just as with her, two tears trailed down his cheeks. He left them alone. “When she walked,” he continued, his voice rising with his intent to be firm, “she seemed almost clumsy because her body moved so much. But then you would look at her head and see that it wasn’t moving at all. I don’t know how she did that. And quiet. She could walk without noise. She laughed at how noisily I walked. She told me my feet must be angry with the ground.”
He smiled to himself and his gaze seemed to drift away. She could see he was hearing her mother’s voice telling him he had angry feet.
“Your mother was the most beautiful girl I ever met, the first girl I ever loved. I guess we were more foolish than we should have been. Anyway, I didn’t go back. Not until it was too late, much too late.”
“You went back?”
“Yes, in a way. Years later. I went back to her village. I don’t know what I thought I would find. They told me she was dead. I didn’t expect to find that.”
“At least you did go back.”
“Yes, at least I went back.”
He didn’t think it meant anything, but she was glad he had gone back to the village. She wished she had known about that before.
“Do you wonder why I came?” she asked.
“I’m not wondering that at all.”
“I didn’t come to ask for anything.”
“I know. Maybe you wanted to see what you got stuck with. Like that little finger.” He pointed to her right hand. “I noticed it before, but I didn’t make the connection.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at it. Look at this,” he said and held up his finger for her to compare. “See? Bends like an S. It runs in the family.”
She looked at her finger and then held it up beside his. “I always thought it was just weird.”
“It is weird.”
“I know, but I thought maybe I stuck it into something when I was a baby.”
“No. My father has the same weird finger. So did his father. As far as I know, you’re the first girl in the family to get it.”
“Wow,” she said, holding her strange finger up beside his. “Wow,” she repeated.
“You like it?”
“It’s not so bad.”
She had looked at that finger a thousand times and never thought it would link her to anyone. Father and father and father.
“Katherine told me your father is still alive.”
“He’s in a nursing home. It’s not the best life.”
“My mother’s parents are both dead. I just have an uncle left in the village.”
“What happened after your mother died? Where did you live?”
“In Anchorage, with my stepfather. She got married when I was four.”
“Does he know about this? Is this okay with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did he treat you well?”
“Yes,” she said more cautiously. “He was nice to me. I’m supposed to call him.”
“We’ll both call him. Would you like to visit my father sometime, your grandfather?”
“Oh yes. Very much.”
“Sometimes he doesn’t know who I am. I have to tell him I’m his son. I’m afraid he won’t understand who you are.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll know who he is.”
“I hope so. You can look at his finger, too. I’ll tell him, ‘Dad, this is Maria, my daughter, your granddaughter, and she has a finger just like yours.’“
“You’ll tell him that?” she asked.
“Yes. My god, Maria,” he said as he cupped her hands, crooked finger and all, into his, “I’m so glad you found me.”
She pulled her hands away sharply and threw them around his neck. Her face bored into his chest as she cried again with all her heart. She felt his hand patting her back the way her mother used to do. She could not imagine what would come next. He seemed as overwhelmed as she, maybe more. She had been thinking about this most of her life, but it had landed on him all at once. They would have to figure it out, she thought. A little at a time. Her hand began imitating his, imitating her mother’s hand. She was sure eighteen years could not be patted away. Still they patted on, soothing each other, trying not to be frightened, just holding on while it lasted.
Chapter 40
Katherine rolled down her car windows and turned the radio on loud. The outside air was not quite warm enough to be comfortable, and she turned the heater on. When she glanced at her speedometer, she saw she was twenty miles over the speed limit. She slowed a little but then forgot the speedometer again as she cruised through midmorning traffic.
She pushed the radio button to avoid a sales pitch and was blasted with a screeching song. She pushed the button again and then again. What happened to the good songs?
What was happening with Maria? She could still see the girl’s expression the night before when she had mentioned the name of the kayak—Gloria. It had come in the middle of the story, but it had stopped the story flat.
“He calls the kayak Gloria?“ the girl had asked.
“Yes. What’s the matter?”
“That’s my mother’s name. He must remember her then.”
“Of course he remembers. He loves that old boat better than anything.”
Katherine had blurted the words out before thinking—for the girl’s benefit—but it was true, wasn’t it? When the girl smiled, Katherine saw the first likeness of Sam. Sam, Maria, Gloria—names that went together, that had history. When the link with those names was conceived, she had been a little girl a thousand miles away watching the moon with her father.
No moon now. No boat either. And why couldn’t she find a radio station that played something decent? In disgust she turned off the radio.
Rather than scour streets a mile away for a free parking spot, she pulled into a lot across from the police station. The attendant, a young boy with bright red pimples, strutted around as if the money that went into the register was his. He told her to leave the keys and he would park the car. She had no intention of leaving her keys with him and parked the car herself. It made his surly attitude surlier. She couldn’t decide which of the two, strut or attitude, was more appealing. She slammed her car door and dared him to say anything as she walked past him. He stepped back into his little shack but called out as she passed, “Have a nice day.” Let it go, she thought. Let it go.
She walked into the police garage and took the stairs to
the fifth floor. Markowitz was at his desk. He looked exhausted. She wondered if he had even gone home. A man and a woman, lawyers, were sitting at the desk next to him.
“Hey, Murphy,” he said. “Good timing. I was just going to call you and Wright and see if you were up. This is Paul Evans, prosecutor’s office, and Judith Wilson, public defender. Officer Murphy is the original investigating officer.”
“One of them,” Katherine said.
Wilson got out of her chair and extended her hand. “I’m representing Richard Rutherford.”
“Rutherford is the puke that worked the girl over in the basement—got us started on this merry chase,” Markowitz added.
Wilson, her smile not faltering, seemed used to a lack of appreciation. “It’s all part of the job,” she said. Katherine smiled as they shook hands.
“I’m the guy on your side,” Evans said. They shook hands, too, but Katherine wished the two had opposite jobs.
“We’re moving right along here,” Markowitz said. “This morning, Judith’s boy got the feeling that the jailhouse was getting a little crowded. Word travels fast up there, you know. It seems he wants to tell us a story.”
“What story?” Katherine asked.
“He says he knows where we can find Alberta—the body, that is.”
“He may know something about it,” Judith Wilson corrected, emphasizing the word “may.” “Detective Markowitz likes to walk on the edge,” she continued. Her voice was controlled just enough to show she was not fooling around. “You should know, Detective Markowitz, that if you try to talk to my client again when he wants his lawyer present, I’ll have this thrown out faster than you guys can type up the release.”
“I wouldn’t think of doing such a thing. If you don’t want him talking to us, you just tell him that.”
“I have. Now let’s lay this out and see if we have anything. We’ll agree to misdemeanor assault, nothing more.”
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