Look Closely

by Laura Caldwell

  I took Dan’s article out of my purse, and moved my chair under an outdoor light.

  A Midwesterner Searches For

  Uncommon Beauty

  By Dan Singer

  When a Midwestern boy from Michigan relocates to Santa Fe, his definition of beauty changes. Beauty, once an obvious companion, becomes a playful vamp, one he must find in uncommon places.

  No longer does he find beauty in the Midwest’s wrenching changes of season—the golden autumn crashing into three months of a white-covered world, which stumbles suddenly into a too-short spring and then a blazing hot summer. Instead, he looks for the subtlety of the Santa Fe weather. The flat stretches of dirt brown don’t change, nor do the salmon-colored curves of the mountains or their dotting of green bush. Instead, he keeps a watchful eye on the first prickling of vibrant blooms in early April, waiting for the flowers to dress up the Plaza like a woman putting on her makeup, when she knows visitors are about to arrive. And he waits for the crowd of canvases and sculptures to appear on the street, letting him know that the gallery shows have started and summer has emerged. The August rains whisper in his ear, telling rumors of a coming fall, and when the wildflowers make their appearance, he knows the rains were telling the truth. Christmas, for him, isn’t symbolized now by pine and holly but by the burning farolitos lining the rooftops.

  The Midwestern boy can’t find beauty in his family any longer, for they lead different lives thousands of miles away. Now he watches his new wife lifting a pan out of the oven or arranging yellow buds in a coffee can converted into a vase, and he thinks that this is more lovely than the family reunion he will never have. The Midwestern boy and his new wife have created their own family during this search of his, and the baby girl who has entered their lives shines with an internal beauty, one her father hopes never dims, never has reason to.

  His old Michigan landscape, hilly and forest green, crisscrossed with highways and roads and covered with lakes that reflect the navy blue of the sky, is no longer there for him. Now he turns to the single lonely byway connecting Albuquerque to Santa Fe. He finds comfort in the stillness of the vast expanse, in the lighter blue sky that is bigger than he could have ever imagined, in the brown trickle of the Rio Grande.

  He no longer looks for redbrick, black wrought-iron railings and patrician columns to tell him a house is beautiful. He turns, instead, to the rounded corners of squat blond adobe, to the flat roofs, and the blue window frames.

  Santa Fe has changed the boy from Michigan. It’s changed his thoughts and the places he seeks comfort. It has told him of an uncommon beauty lingering in its corners, and in doing so, it has found him a home.

  I read the article twice more, struck by the spare loneliness, the use of the word boy to refer to himself, and the mention that Dan had been searching for something. The article seemed intent on showing that he had found it, that he had located whatever he was looking for, but I didn’t quite believe it. I didn’t know my brother any better than I knew molecular science, but there was a lingering feeling there in the article, one of desperation, one that I thought I could relate to. I’d been trying to convince myself that I belonged in Manhattan since I moved there at the start of law school, and yet, I still felt like an outsider, one who wanted badly to fit in. Maybe I did have something in common with my brother after all.

  I scheduled a massage for Saturday morning at the hotel spa, and as the therapist rubbed the knots and stiffness out of my body, I wondered why I didn’t do this more often. After the massage, I sat in the outdoor hot tub, letting the bubbles swirl around me, the sun strike my face. I ordered a breakfast of fresh fruit and yogurt, which I ate on the deck of the spa, swaddled in a thick terry-cloth robe. By the time I checked out an hour later, I felt better than I had in weeks.

  I decided to drive by Dan’s house, and then I would head to the airport. Now that it was light out, I could see, rather than simply sense, the desert spreading around me. I passed sandy hills with occasional outcroppings of flat-roofed houses nearly camouflaged into the landscape. Sproutings of barely green tufted sagebrush and washed-out khaki-colored trees lay below the peaked outlines of the craggy brown mountains in the distance. I began to understand Dan’s article and his concept of uncommon beauty.

  A woman on an old, low-rider Harley drove next to me for a while. She wore black-fringed chaps and a helmet painted in a black-and-white cow pattern. She looked to me like a woman who knew herself, knew her place in the world, but then what did I know? I was judging her by her appearance. Once, I had heard two summer associates at the law firm talking about me in the bathroom. I had frozen inside the stall when I heard my name, scared that it was Paige or one of her crew ready to skewer me, to start some nasty rumor, but it had been very different. The two women, whose voices I soon recognized, were very kind, complimenting my clothes, my work at the firm, even commenting that I seemed to have so much confidence. It was that last comment that depressed me. Sure, I was glad that I presented that image, but sometimes I felt so alone, not confident or proud, and the saddest thing was no one seemed to recognize it. Maybe Maddy, maybe my dad sometimes. But I knew the bigger problem was me. I wasn’t letting anyone in on those occasional not-so-proud moments.

  As the woman in the chaps rumbled past on the motorcycle, I noticed a green four-door about two car lengths behind me. It was in the same lane as the motorcycle, but as the motorcycle sped away, and the car had an opportunity to pass me, as well, yet it dropped into the lane behind me, keeping a reasonable distance. I sped up and began passing cars, but the green four-door stayed with me, always a short distance away, making it impossible to see the driver by looking in the rearview mirror.

  Soon, I reached the Albuquerque exits. I turned off at the first one, even though it wasn’t where I planned on leaving the highway. The green car did the same.

  I drove to a gas station and quickly pulled up to a pump. The green car slowed as it approached the station, then sped up again. I got out and stood by my car, pretending I was studying the gas prices, but behind my sunglasses, I watched the car drive a short way down the road, pull into a parking lot, turn around and come back toward the station. The car’s left blinker went on. It was about to turn into the station, but a number of passing cars in the other direction forced it to wait.

  It was the opportunity I needed. Paranoia or no, I was going to lose this guy. I jumped back into my rental car and sped away from the tanks, back down the road, making my way toward the highway exit. Roaring up the ramp, I kept shifting my gaze to the rearview mirror. No sign of the green car, but I felt hot and flushed all over. I cranked up the air-conditioning, ignoring the decreasing speed limits into the city. I kept my foot on the gas until I was sure the car hadn’t followed me.

  Finally, I found the exit I had originally intended to use. By then I had cooled down and I felt foolish. I began paying attention to navigating my way to Dan’s house.

  If Santa Fe was a hamlet posing as a city, Albuquerque was a metropolis. There were Western designs on a few of the buildings and some American Indian decorations, but mostly it seemed like many other cities. Skyscrapers, winding byways, ghettos.

  Dan’s house was easy to find with the directions Sharon had given me. I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. A large, aluminum-sided house painted gray-green that was identical to the other houses in the subdivision. They were all nice homes, but there was barely anything to distinguish one house from the other. A different car in the garage maybe or a baby stroller waiting outside another front door. And Dan’s house was barren of even those effects. Maybe I had anticipated something with more character, because I always pictured Dan as a writer more than a salesman, or maybe I was remembering the proud look on his face in that picture when they had just moved into the Santa Fe home.

  I parked in the driveway and walked to the front door. I looked around a few times when I reached it, but there was no sign of the green car, just a couple of kids riding their bikes. I
wondered if Annie had friends in this neighborhood. Did she like visiting her dad?

  My knock made a hollow echo inside the house. I wasn’t surprised. The mail was stuffed in the box next to the front door, some of the envelopes and magazines spilling onto the concrete stoop where the postman had started stacking the rest of the mail.

  I knocked again and again. Nothing. I walked around the house, but all the blinds were closed tight. No sign of life. It was time go.

  When I reached my apartment, I collected my mail and flipped through it in the elevator. As soon as I came to the fourth envelope, a large, manila one, I stopped and smiled.

  Ty Manning, the return address said.

  I went into the apartment and let my bag fall onto the floor. I stuck my finger in the small opening at the end of the flap and pulled. Inside was a stack of paper.

  The top sheet was plain but for a few handwritten lines.

  Thought you might want to see this. It’s a copy of the police file on your mom’s investigation. Let me know if I can do anything else to help. Hope you’ll come back to see us soon. Ty.

  I set aside the top page and flipped through the others. Sure enough, they were police records. I was used to reading such records occasionally for certain cases, but now my mother’s name was on the face sheet, accompanied by phrases like “cause of death” and “severe head injury.” At the bottom there was a stamp that said, “Case Closed.”

  I riffled through the other pages, noticing typed witness interviews and handwritten notes, but I couldn’t focus on the content.

  I pulled out my Palm Pilot and looked up Ty’s number. No answer at his house. I called the front desk at the inn. He answered, and we chatted for a few seconds, but I was too anxious for small talk.

  “Ty, how did you get these records?” I asked. Whenever I wanted a police report for a lawsuit, getting it was usually a lengthy, detailed process that involved subpoenas and court appearances.

  “I just asked the records clerk. Everyone knows me, so it wasn’t very difficult.”

  “Does your dad know?”

  Silence for a second. “I did ask him first, and he said he’d dig them up, but I knew he’d never get to it.”

  “So you went around him.”

  “I guess.” Ty sounded uncomfortable now.

  “I don’t want you to do anything that could affect your relationship with your dad.” I was feeling bad about my own relationship with my father. I didn’t need to hurt Ty’s, too.

  “Well, there isn’t much to affect,” Ty said in a wry voice.

  “I thought you were close.”

  “My dad is close to my mom, and that’s pretty much it. He was a good father in some ways. He brought home the money, went to a few football games, but he’s not going to win any father of the year awards.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize.” I thought of the feelings of affection I’d had when I was in the Mannings’ kitchen for dinner, the desire to have a family like that.

  “It’s no big deal,” Ty said. “He just got beaten down by the work over the years. He’s seen too much, I guess. Too much ugliness. At least that’s what my mom says. Because he wasn’t always as hard. It’s why my brother and sister live away from home, though. They can’t deal with him on a regular basis.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Like I said, no big deal.”

  Ty and I talked for twenty more minutes. I filled him in on my trip to New Mexico. I have a niece named Annie, I said. I told him the things I’d learned about Dan, and he told me stories about a group of rowdy guests that had stayed at the inn that week. The conversation was natural, easy.

  “Are you coming back to Woodland Dunes any time soon?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I surprised myself with a coy tone to my voice. “I’m not sure if there’s anything there for me.”

  “Well, there are about three kegs at the bar that you didn’t drink last time.”

  “That’s a low blow.” We both laughed. “I am coming to Chicago this week. For a case.”

  “Call me when you get here, and if you can’t come over to our side of the lake, I’ll come to you.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Definitely.”

  Before I read the police records, I tried Maddy once again. The number of beeps on her answering machine told me that she hadn’t checked her messages in a while. Must be staying at Grant’s place. Or maybe they had gone out of town. I felt a little pang of envy. I’d gotten messages from Maddy, but they were quicker than usual. She was always running out the door to meet Grant. I hadn’t even met him, and yet she always seemed to be with him these days. I tried her cell phone, but got no answer there, either.

  I unpacked my small bag, which took only a few minutes, and made some pasta with sauce from a jar. Once I’d eaten and watched an hour of mindless TV, there was nothing keeping me from reading the police records. I was anxious to get to them, and yet fearful of what I might find.

  I could hear an increase in the volume outside, car horns and stereos and voices, signaling that the city was priming up for another long Saturday night. But I had no plans. Maddy was nowhere to be found. I didn’t want to call my father, despite the number of messages he had left on my machine, so I was holed up in my apartment with a stack of old records calling to me from my coffee table. Finally, I settled on the couch with a mug of cinnamon tea, a far cry from the martinis and scotches that were being drunk around the city.

  I picked up the face sheet of the police records. Its lines and boxes contained typed factual information. “Assistant Chief Manning” was listed as the investigation officer. The cause of death was there—“severe brain stem injury/hemorrhage”—as well the date of death, “May 20, 1982.” I felt that date like a thud to my chest. The anniversary of my mother’s death was only a few days away.

  I made myself continue through the rest of the information. The time of death was stated as “Approx. 1:20 a.m.” How had they determined that, exactly?

  I flipped through the stack until I found the coroner’s report. Authored by Dr. Charles Winnaker, the autopsy was a clinical description of every organ of my mother’s body, every limb and nail bed. There was a rush of sickness in my stomach, the pasta I’d eaten seeming to slosh and churn. I was vaguely familiar with autopsies from the one or two medical-malpractice cases I’d worked on as a summer associate. I knew that they involved a literal carving of the body, the skin split from pelvis to neck, the ribs cut with a saw, the heart and liver weighed and documented like a butcher slaughtering livestock. This was all necessary, I knew, for the physician to determine exactly what had happened to the body, what had caused the eventual shut down, but the thought of my mother’s body undergoing that was grueling.

  I put the records down for a moment. Just read it all quickly, I thought. Skip the morbidly detailed inventory of body parts and get to the conclusion.

  I lifted the autopsy report again and scanned it, trying to pretend this was just another case I was working on at the firm, that this wasn’t about someone I knew. Finally, I reached the end. There, Dr. Winnaker stated that a massive hemorrhage in the brain stem had caused the death of Leah Sutter, and, based on the decomposition of the body, he believed she had expired at approximately 1:20 a.m. He did not conclude what had caused the bleed but stated that it was consistent with either a blow to the back of the head or a fall.

  A blow to the head, I thought. That could mean physical abuse, just as Chief Manning had originally suspected. A fall was the other possibility that the doctor had decided on, though. I knew I should be relieved that a cruel but simple fall down the stairs might very well have been the end of Leah Sutter. Nothing sinister about it. Certainly not murder. But why couldn’t I get myself to remember it? Why didn’t it sound right?

  It was the letter, I decided. The damn letter suggesting murder. I went into my bedroom, dark but for the streetlights outside, and without turning on any lamps, I found it in my briefcase, br
inging it back to the couch with me. There is no statute of limitations on murder. Look closely.

  For the first time, I wondered if maybe I had misinterpreted the thing. It had been addressed to me, no doubt about it, but maybe it hadn’t been referring to my mother after all. It had simply been an immediate, gut-level conclusion. But if not my mother, then who? I ran my mind over past clients, possible extended-family members. But I couldn’t think of any clients who had passed away, and as for family members, I didn’t know any. My father had taken care of that.

  I took another sip of the cinnamon tea that had grown cool. Enough musings, I decided. Quit putting it off. I picked up the police records again.

  The most interesting records were Chief Manning’s handwritten notes and the dictated, typewritten summaries of his interviews with various witnesses. He’d been diligent in his note taking, making mention of the day and time whenever he jotted something. His first few notations were often similar, such as “high suspicion of domestic abuse.” The next ones indicated he had interviewed William Sutter, the husband of the deceased, as well as Dan Sutter, son. According to the note he’d jotted afterward, “The statements of Mr. William Sutter and Mr. Dan Sutter appear rehearsed and strikingly similar. Covering for each other?” Then he wrote, “Physical abuse—husband, son or boyfriend?”

  The sickness riding my insides deepened. Had my father or my brother struck my mother? Had they hidden it together? I’d never seen Dan again, after all. Perhaps he had been told to run, to stay away, the same thing he was doing now in New Orleans. Had they done it because they had discovered the relationship with her boyfriend? That man on the beach, the man at the front door on the night she died?

  I flipped through pages looking for the dictated summary of the interrogation of my father. Upstairs, my neighbors kicked off a party. Blaring music and pounding footfalls came clearly through my ceiling. I found the interview and began to read. William Sutter and his wife had been separated three weeks, he had told Chief Manning, but they’d not yet filed for divorce. He was hoping for a reconciliation. The reasons for the separation, he said, were his need to live in Chicago during the week and his wife’s affair. He had just found out about the infidelity. She admitted this to him and told him it had been going on for less than a year. She refused to tell him the name of the man she was involved with, and Mr. Sutter indicated he did not have any idea as to who that person might be. Mr. Sutter denied any suggestion that he had abused his wife. He was described by Chief Manning as distraught. The interview had to be stopped on more than one occasion because Mr. Sutter was crying.