“Are you all right, Father? You seem kind of wobbly. How about a cup of hot tea?” He steered the old monk toward a delicatessen, got him a hot cup of tea and a danish. “Eat it in good health, Father.”
Father Joseph held the policeman by the wrist. “I’ll remember you in my prayers.”
“You do that, Father. I need all the help I can get.”
The tea was scalding hot and Father Joseph tried to drink it with the tea bag still in it. He burned his mouth but he felt the heat flow down his throat and spread through his torso. He didn’t want the danish. He had no appetite and his jaw was trembling. He put his hands around the hot mug and felt the heat flow up his wrists. When he nearly finished the cup, the waitress brought a hot kettle and poured more steaming water into his cup.
“Eat the danish,” she said softly. “Dip it in the tea. Eat.”
He fed it to himself in broken pieces, dripping from the hot tea. He felt his appetite return. The heat restored him. He became stronger and felt grateful. He bowed his head and said a belated grace. He knew he would be all right now: He remembered his name. It was Michael Dunovan. He stood up and moved toward the door. He would be all right now. It was less than five miles to Brendan Davitt’s home in Brooklyn. Most of all he feared the exposed walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Thoughtfully he watched a city bus at an intersection: Wheels made things so easy.
The agency car was an old Chevrolet that complained of its hard life. It emitted a quintet of squeaks and squeals as Brendan drove it downtown toward the morgue. The man sat beside him, staring straight ahead, eyes fixed, hands holding in his lap the envelope with the dental records and partial fingerprints of his daughter.
When Brendan led him to the viewing room, the man looked through the window at the girl. Her body lay covered with a white sheet. The face was small and thin with heavy mascara and worn-away lipstick. Her hair had been bleached. The man was weeping expectantly and he couldn’t see well through the tears. He stared bewildered at the face.
“So thin,” he cried.
“She may have lost a lot of weight,” Brendan said. “She was on drugs. Heavy stuff.”
“There was a mole on her left wrist,” the man said.
The attendant inside pulled back the sheet and lifted the left arm, showed the dirty hand, chewed fingernails and the needle tracks. On the wrist above the thumb was a small mole and the man spun away and raised his fists.
“Oh, God.” He settled into a bench. “She wasn’t bad. She was just a child. Oh, Cissy. Cissy.”
Brendan watched the familiar scene. Oh, Cissy, Debbie, Mary, Edie, Dory, Kathie, Missy, Susie, Nancy, Patty, Regina, Margie, Shirley, Sandy, Rita, Tammy, Vicky, Wendy, Yasmin. He sat beside the man and put his hand on his shoulder. “You could be wrong. You should look again. Be positive.”
“I can’t. It’s terrible.”
“You’ll wonder for the rest of your life. Make sure.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes. You can.”
“I don’t want to know. It’s her. I know it.”
Brendan helped him to his feet. “Look again. Is that the mole?”
The man wiped the back of his hand across his wet cheeks. Panting, he leaned over and stared at the mole again. “It’s—oh, I don’t know. It seems too high, too small.” He looked again at the drawn face through squinting eyes. “I can’t tell with that stuff on her eyes.”
The side door of the viewing room opened and the sergeant from the police I.D. division stepped through. He shook his head. “The teeth don’t match.”
“Positive?”
“Unless he brought the wrong dental card.”
“How about the prints?”
“They’re not very good. But they don’t seem to match either. Come on, Davitt. It’s not his kid. Tell him.”
“You’d better be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Brendan turned the man away from the window by the shoulders. “The police say it’s not your daughter. Understand?”
The man nodded and almost collapsed. Brendan guided him back to the bench and let him down slowly.
“Not Cissy?”
“No.”
“I have to call her mother.” The man dried his tears and began slowly to gather himself. He smiled at Brendan. “Son of a gun. It’s the best day of my life. I have to tell her mother. Where’s the phone?”
The curtain on the viewing window closed. Not his daughter. No more tears. Then who would weep for the dead girl?
Anne O’Casey had loved Brendan Davitt ever since that summer on Long Beach Island when he’d written the play for her Puppet Theater. Today she had decided she was going to tell him. She had it all planned.
In the delicatessen everyone was talking about the impending snowstorm. But she had no time for chat: The motor home that she’d borrowed from the studio was parked illegally at the curb, and there was a policeman up the street giving tickets. She picked up her lunch order and hurried out of the shop. No ticket: She drove away feeling victorious.
The motor home was the property of the photography studio she worked for, and it was used as a portable dressing room for models and sometimes a portable photography lab. And sometimes it was used as a portable casting couch.
She rehearsed what she was going to say to Brendan. But it still didn’t sound right. The thought of doing it made her palms wet. Maybe her mother was right. Some things are better left unsaid. Her mother’s life had been ruined by telling a man that she loved him. Whenever Anne thought about her childhood, the first thing she recalled was the sound of her mother’s weeping. Secret weeping. Her father was a thief, a con man, a philanderer, an absconder, a self-server, a clotheshorse, a conscienceless user of people and one of the handsomest men in New York. And her mother made the mistake of loving him. “I was sixteen and he was twenty-nine going on twelve, a permanent selfish evil boy.”
Against the family’s wishes, her mother had married this charming brute for love—deep love, a love that took a lot of killing before it ended. For years a few murmured promises of reform were all her father had to make in order to win her mother over once more—until one day she scorned his vows and stoically watched as he wrecked the apartment, breaking the few pieces of good furniture she’d inherited, breaking them deliberately while watching her face.
Her mother left him in anger and lived in bitterness thereafter. “Never tell a man you love him,” she told Anne every night at dinner. “Marry for security. Marry a good provider for your children. Be a good wife but never love him. Never hesitate to leave him. And never never never take him back. Never.” That was the sermon ingested with the soup diurnally. Amen.
“Brendan, I love you.” She shook her head. Inside her, her mother screamed. “Brendan, will you marry me?” She looked in the rearview mirror and said it again. Then: “I love you.” She mouthed the three words silently. “I love you.” Her mouth looked ridiculous.
She rehearsed again the speech that she’d been rehearsing for years. “I’ve loved you ever since I was fifteen. I get so excited when I’m going to see you, my heart sings. And all the lights go on.’ No. I’ll say, ‘You fill my life with love.’ No. ‘Marry me and I’ll make you the best wife a man ever had—’ Oh, bad. That’s terrible, Annie.” She deepened her voice. “‘Now, Annie, marry me and I’ll make you the best husband any woman ever had.’” She put on a skeptical expression. “‘I’ll have to think about this, Brendan. Marriage is no casual thing with me. I have my career to think about. I don’t know whether there’s room for love and marriage in my life. Convince me, Brendan. Kneel on the white handkerchief.’ Oh, Brendan.” She embraced her shoulders. “‘Quick before you change your mind let’s go find a minister.’ Oh, this is stupid. He’ll never marry me or anyone. No, no, no, Annie. Positive thinking. Say, ‘I’m going to give myself the gift of a lifetime. Brendan Davitt. Happy lifetime, Anne O’Casey.’” Then she changed her mind again. She vowed she would not ask him today. Would she?
“Where’s your pride, Anne?” her mother asked.
Getting Brendan in the motor home was no problem: He was hungry and she had food. He didn’t object when she drove downtown. “We’ll have a front-row seat overlooking New York Harbor,” she told him. “Maybe we’ll see a humongous snowstorm while we eat.”
She drove down Ninth Avenue toward the Battery. “Twenty-four today,” she said. “Oh, bad.”
“Is twenty-four really bad?” Brendan said. “I don’t mind it at all.”
“Well, as they say, it’s better than being in Philadelphia.” She watched him chuckle. “Old joke,” she said lamely.
“What do you want for your birthday?”
“Oh, great. You wait until the day comes, then you ask me. How about the Hope Diamond?”
“Seriously. What do you want for your birthday?”
“Seriously. I want you.” It just popped out. What a gaffe. She watched his face with dread. “I’m sorry. I mean. Oh, what the hell. I’m not sorry.”
He smiled at her. “Neither am I.”
“What does that mean, Brendan?”
“I’m not sorry you want me for your birthday. Here.” And he held out both arms in surrender.
“I accept. Are you going to be gift-wrapped or do I get you with the everyday packaging?”
Brendan said, “You’re going to get me dead if you don’t feed me soon, Annie.”
Did it again: She’d retreated into jokes and he’d followed her. Then a switch to food and they were out of the sand trap. Once again. She smiled at him gaily but something inside was grim. Like a genie from a bottle, her mother’s presence was sitting in the seat between them.
It was a hell of a mess driving the motor home through the financial district. Trucks were double-parked in the narrow curving streets, and the noontime foot traffic had spilled off the sidewalks and into the streets, bringing everything to a standstill. At last she parked the motor home down at Battery Park near the entrance to the Staten Island ferries.
“Luncheon is served,” she said.
They got into the dining booth in the back, and she took sandwiches and delicatessen out of the paper bag and served them on paper plates. Then she drew out the wine bottle. “Seduction scene. You get to keep the cork as a memento of your conquest.” It was a Soave, a good white wine that they both liked even in the plastic cups.
“How’s the world of photography?” he asked her.
“Fantastic. I pulled off a real Edward Weston this morning. A black-and-white study of a quartz mantel clock for a midtown jeweler. I could hardly believe I took it. The client’s crazy about it. Esther Logan wants us to open our own studio.”
“Will you?”
“Why not? We’re ready. We have lots of contacts and this is New York. Esther has her eye on a loft studio in the Forties somewhere. A lot of garment makers in the building but we’ll get the top floor with a bunch of skylights.”
She watched him eat the sandwich. “What’s in the future for you, Brendan?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Something, I suppose.”
It was the same old evasion. “Think you’ll stay with Wandering Child?”
“I suppose.”
“Brendan. You’re making peanuts there. Typists make more money than you do.”
“Yes, but they don’t have half the fun.”
“Well, here’s to your future, love.” She held her plastic cup up to him. “You’re my favorite social worker. You ever think of getting married?”
He was looking intently through the large window at the park. Five cars were parked there with the engines running. Well-dressed men, buttoned up against the wind, would come hurrying out of the financial district and across the park. The men in the cars would crank down their windows and pass out small packets and receive cash in return. Then the well-dressed men would hurry back to their desks in the countinghouses. Death wish: a personal ’29 crash in the offing. Madness.
“Marriage,” she said. “Brendan.”
“I went to the morgue this morning and saw the body of a child with needle tracks up and down her arms. Probably murdered with an overdose by a pimp because she had gonorrhea, syphilis and herpes. An overdose is cheaper than medical attention. After all, the pimp has his clients to think of and there’s an abundance of healthy fourteen-year-olds for replacements.”
She saw the ferry arrive, watched a throng of passengers hurry away amid disembarking cars. They walked off into the wind and in moments were absorbed by the city. Morgue. So much for her love speech.
He smiled at her. “And I love you too, Anne.”
“Oh, hooray. Brendan Davitt does his mind-reading act amid the applause of thousands.” She shook her head at him. “You love everyone, Brendan. The whole damned world—people, snakes, dead rats, even your enemies.”
He took her stabbing finger. “Ever since we were fifteen on Long Beach Island. You were my Miss February.”
“I was? What does that mean?”
“We had a bag full of Playboy magazines. And you were the spitting image of Miss February.”
She frowned at him. “You looked at a centerfold nude and pretended it was me?”
“She was like your twin. Same color hair.” He smiled at her. “All over.”
“Oh boy.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Damn it, Brendan. I’m blushing. Here I was feeling the tenderest love for you and you were mentally groping me.”
“I told you I was in love with you—good healthy lusty love.” He smiled at her expression. “You’re a real armful, Annie. You could put Miss February to shame.”
“Armful, ha. A sylphlike centerfold I am not. How come you never told me all these years, champ?”
“You never told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you love me.”
“Why would I tell you a thing like that? Who says I love you?” She felt his eyes watching her expression. “Oh, what the hell, Brendan. Of course I love you. I was ready to marry you when I was fifteen.”
He nodded solemnly at her. “It’s not that easy, Annie.”
“Damn it, Brendan, if I can say it, you can too.”
He kissed her. “I love you, Annie.”
“But—Right? There’s a but?”
“Yes. There’s a but. I said it’s not that easy. There’s something in my future I can’t ask you to share with me.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, Annie.”
“Not all of it. You make it sound like a death sentence.”
“That’s exactly what it may be.”
Annie said, “Grab life by the ears—that’s what Father Turner says in his sermons.”
“I don’t think he had my case in mind.”
She asked, “How much time do we have?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Soon, I think.”
“Let’s assume it’s two weeks. Okay? Two weeks of waking up in the morning and finding you beside me. Two weeks of sharing our lives, going out to dinner, cleaning the pad, listening to music, loving each other, whispering to each other and discovering things, feeling things we’ve never felt before. Two whole weeks. I’ll take it. And count myself blessed.”
“Two weeks?” He looked doubtfully at her.
“Yes,” she said. “I want it. It’s life and I’ll take a chance on it. Ride the tiger. I’ll take my life with you like salami—a slice at a time, a day at a time. No strings.” She pulled his arms around her. “You got your arms around a lot of girl, Brendan, and I’m all yours.”
He watched her face in silence, a bemused half-smile on his lips.
She felt his arms tighten around her and draw her closer. He still didn’t speak.
“Cat got your tongue, Brendan?”
He kissed her very lightly, tenderly. “A long time ago, I decided I ha
d to come to a decision about you. So a certain day came and I took a long walk along the docks. It was a breezy day in April, I remember, and the piers were busy—ships unloading and loading, all those odors from all over the world—coffee and spices and burlap and fruit. I even remember where you were. You were up in Maine with your mother’s uncle.”
“That was three years ago.”
“Yes. I wanted to ask you to marry me. I wanted to ask you to wait until I got my degree. I wanted to tell you about my second sight, as they call it in the family. I wanted to explain everything so that you would know exactly what you were walking into. I wandered for miles and miles along the Brooklyn waterfront up under the Brooklyn Bridge, up around Wallabout Bay and the old Brooklyn Navy Yard. And by the time I turned and walked back I’d decided to propose. I was so happy I was dancing as I walked, and the longshoremen stared at me. When I got back to Brooklyn Heights it was dark and I went into the house. Aunt Maeve was in the kitchen and I wanted to tell her what I’d decided so I went upstairs to wash my face and get ready for dinner. Then without warning I had a terrifying vision. I saw this awful face in a black monk’s cowl. It was a goat’s face, covered with black fur, with two small horns that grew against its forehead and skull and two glowing green eyes that were so malevolent—so hate-filled—they were insane. Two insane eyes and this sense of enormous, furious power. Those two eyes were looking right at me. I knew that I was going to have to fight him. And I was convinced I could never win. In that beast was the power of the universe. I have often wondered if it was Satan himself.” He looked at her. “I could never involve you in any of this.”
“You can’t climb in a box and hide until Judgment Day, Brendan. You have to dare to live. And so do I.”
He looked away from her. “I had this all worked out and bundled up and put away in my mind. Now you want me to take it out, take off the strings and go through the whole thing again.”
“But that’s my decision to make, not yours.”
“I didn’t want to give you such a terrible decision. If I didn’t say anything, I was sure you would eventually meet someone else and have a normal life. You’re a beauty, Anne. Men stare at you. And you have a marvelous personality. Go meet someone and have a happy life.”
The Monk Page 14