Vomen, as the good doctor called them, came in two varieties, like marbles. There were the taws, the shooters—those were the ones that did the hitting—and there were the ducks—the ones that got hit. They were all made of glass and Davis could see through them all. Except, of course, the aggies. His mama had been an aggie—so fine that even his father had had the sense to prize her.
Now that she was gone, Davis's home was overrun by the common types. They were all after his da, willing to be ducks if the mood struck him, just so as they wouldn't have to be without a man. Half of them wanted to mother Davis, as if he still needed that, and the other half didn't want nothing to do with a ten-year-old boy. That was the half he preferred. Always best to know where he stood, he figured.
He turned, heading for the steps since the doctor was blocking the ramp they'd come up, and figuring he didn't care much which way he went down so long as he got away from the lawyer's house.
"Might as vell talk to her," the doc said, his grip on Davis's shoulder about as tight as a pipe wrench, which was pretty surprising for a man as old as he was, what with his having practically no hair and all. "We've come a long vay, and I know I'm not going back vitout something should fill my belly. It's a long valk back, no?"
Davis didn't like being taken for a fool. He knew the food was a bribe. He thought that maybe since he knew up front and had no plans of falling for it, then it was him pulling the scam. It'd been a while since he'd had a good meal, and so long as it was clear that they'd be leaving soon as they ate, Davis supposed it was all right with him. It was a long trip back, what with the doctor not taking a horsecar after dark on Fridays, and Davis was tired as a bartender's arm on Friday, inside and out.
"B-bu-bu-bu..." He gave up without getting the word out, pulling at his lips as if that could fix his tongue and make the words flow smoothly like everyone else's did. No doubt the doctor would just promise to leave and then break his word anyways. At least when he got his words out, Davis meant what he said.
"You just let me do the talking," Dr. Mollenoff said, a warm hand gently rubbing Davis's back through his thin coat. "You don't gotta say a word." And then he rapped again with the brass knocker and muttered something Davis thought might be German.
***
At Maria's sharp knock Charlotte and Cabot both looked up. They'd heard the knocker, Charlotte noting the urgency, and they'd made guesses as to the caller. "At this hour?" Cabot had said. "No doubt a visitor for Ash. Female. Pretty. I'd guess blond."
"The Stanfords," Charlotte had suggested. "Argus has flown the coop and is eating their gaudy purple bougainvillea."
"Better their bougainvillea than more of my buttons," Cabot said, checking his cuffs as Maria entered the room.
"Dr. Mollenoff is here," the maid announced, moving her gaze from Cabot to Charlotte. "He wants to see you."
Cabot seemed relieved. He'd been happy to give the doctor and his pathetic patients over to Charlotte, telling her Dr. Mollenoff's ragtag-and-bobtail band, as he referred to the doctor's patients and friends, was a fine place for her to cut her legal teeth. After all, he'd said with a wink, she couldn't make them any worse off than they already were.
He smiled at her and waved her from his desk, reminding her to take a paper and pencil, saluting her with what was left in his glass of iced tea.
"Lawyer Whittier," he said with a nod of his head, a row of fine white teeth peeking through beneath his heavy mustache.
"Lawyer Wittiest," she said, giving him her usual reply and toasting him with her pad and pen. "You're sure you can spare me?" Despite it's being after nine, she and Cabot were still ironing out some last-minute changes in the summation that had been interrupted by Ash's arraignment.
"I've been practicing law for almost twenty years now, Charlotte," he said, raising his eyebrows at his framed diplomas for verification. "I think I can write a summation on my own."
Despite taking pains to hide her hurt, he apparently caught her mood and quickly amended his answer.
"Now, don't go being offended. I'm sure the summation would be even better for your touch, of course. I'll leave it here and you can look it over if you have time before you go up to bed."
"You needn't patronize me," she said. "I only thought you might want my help. I never thought you needed it."
"Charlotte, don't start this now," Cabot said, a grimace replacing his smile. "You've a client waiting for you."
His eyes returned to the papers in front of him, his shoulders hunching forward privately as if to claim ownership of his work.
"Good night, then," she mumbled before leaving the room. If her help was so unnecessary, why had he kept her down in his dark little office on such a beautiful night, a night that was meant for sitting by the window and seeking out the first star, for watching the reflection of the moon on the ripples of the lake? Because she was a lawyer now, not a silly schoolgirl. And she had a client waiting, waiting while she contemplated wishing stars and waning moons, of all things!
She should have known from the look on Maria's face when the maid had come to get her that Dr. Mollenoff hadn't come by to pay a social call. It was Friday night, after all. Only something of great importance would have kept him from the synagogue. Nevertheless, she wasn't prepared for what waited in the foyer.
In the poorly lit hallway stood her good friend Dr. Mollenoff and a boy of maybe nine or ten. The boy's face bore several fresh bruises, including an awful one that shut one eye. His left arm was in a sling. Still, his chin was defiantly raised, and his one open eye glared at her as if he dared her to comment on his appearance.
Charlotte took a deep breath, fought to swallow the horror creeping up her throat, and offered him a smile. For all his bravado the boy was shaking like there was an earthquake.
"Maria, would you be so kind as to get this young man a nice tall glass of milk? Or would you prefer some hot cocoa?"
The boy shrugged, at the cost of great pain, if his wince was any indication.
"Milk, then?" she suggested, and waited for a nod, then passed the request on to Maria, who ran from the room quickly, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her apron. Oh, sure, Maria could cry, but Charlotte had to stand there and act as if it were a perfectly normal everyday occurrence for a boy beaten to a pulp to appear on her doorstep.
Afraid her office might put the boy off, Charlotte led Dr. Mollenoff and the poor child into the front parlor. There she motioned for the boy to sit on the sofa, allowed the doctor to sit next to him, and pulled a chair close enough so that she could take the child's hands, should they be offered to her. From the look of him she doubted it.
She introduced herself, explaining that as a lawyer she was sworn to help those who needed it. Then she asked, in what she hoped was a soft enough voice, if there wasn't some way she could help him.
The boy shook his head, his jaw clenched.
"Well," she said, "Dr. Mollenoff must think I can do something to help you, or he wouldn't have brought you here. And the doctor is a very smart man, isn't he?"
The boy made a face that seemed to imply that either the question was stupid, or the doctor was. Or perhaps it was Charlotte herself he thought was an idiot. He was trying for all the world to look as if none of this concerned him at all, when quite unexpectedly his one good eye honed in on the doorway and opened wide.
Charlotte heard a knock, despite the fact that the doors were open, and then a male voice, which said, "Come in.... Shut up, you stupid bird. Come in.... Shut up, you stupid bird."
Charlotte's head whipped around. Ashford stood in the doorway, feet bare, hair mussed, and Liberty perched on his shoulder, twisting his head this way and that in an apparent attempt to eat Ashford's ear.
"Heard the banging at the door and thought it might be some sort of trouble," he explained to her with a shrug. "When I saw the boy I thought—"
"A pa... pa... par," the boy said, pointing at Liberty.
Ashford came forward and knelt down at the edge of the c
ouch, his arm brushing Charlotte's skirts.
"Liberty, this is..." He paused, looking to Charlotte for the boy's name. She realized with embarrassment that she hadn't even asked.
"Ach!" Dr. Mollenoff said, squinting at the large bird, as if he could possibly be hard to see. "This is Davis Flannigan, and you should pardon my manners I didn't introduce you yet. An old man, I forget hands are for shaking."
He put out his hand to Ashford and when the younger man took it, the doctor quickly clasped it with both of his.
"You look good. I hear from my sister things are not so hunky-dory with you. They're not so hunky-dory with my friend here neither. This is Mr. Vittier, my friend."
"A pleasure," Ashford said, bowing slightly toward the boy, which set the bird to pacing across his shoulders. "It's been a long time, Eli. Tell me, how is it your accent gets thicker every time I see you and Selma's is barely a trace anymore?"
"Age versus youth," the doctor said with a smile. "The older you get, the more you become vhat you always were. A nasty boy becomes a mean man. A selfish girl becomes a stingy old woman. And a Russian peasant becomes... well, my roots are my roots. Sometimes I svear it's my father's vords coming out of my mouth. But Selma, my little Selmala, she came along late in my parents' life, here in America."
"And she'll always be your little Selmala." Charlotte laughed. Selma, two years older than she was, was a grown woman with a job as a bookkeeper, but to her big brother, who was nearly twenty years her senior, she would never grow up. "Well, Davis, what do you think of this bird?"
For Charlotte's part the parrot scared her just a little. He moved slowly, more like a reptile than any sparrow she might spy on the branches outside the high-room windows. Granted, his feathers did look like satin, but his beak was big and hard and his light eyes were old, ringed with white feathers that were lined in black like wrinkles, and he stared at her unblinkingly.
"Oh, pretty, pretty, pretty!" the bird said in yet another voice. "Hoist the sails and get the rigging up!"
"H-h-how does it t-t-talk?" Davis asked, the wonder on his face making Charlotte almost forget about the bruises.
"I can't take credit for that," Ashford said. "Or blame. Won him in a poker game from the captain of the Trustworthy. Came with a few bad habits, I have to admit."
"Shut up, you stupid bird!" the bird squawked, as if he understood what Ash had just said.
"Actually, that phrase would be mine," Ashford said sheepishly, bending so that the bird would be within reach of the boy on the sofa. "You can go ahead and pet him."
There was just a touch of gray in Ash's deep brown hair, a single strand here, another there. It surprised Charlotte, as much because Cabot still spoke of his brother as if he were a child as because, with his footloose ways and fancy-free air, he'd seemed too carefree to have the gray hairs that came with age and worry. But the few silver strands shone enticingly in the lamplight as he crouched beside her, talking with the frightened boy who was mesmerized by the giant scarlet macaw. She all but sat on her hand to keep from just touching the wavy strands.
Either the bird or Ashford smelled faintly of astringent. A tiny nick on his jaw where a bit of dried blood revealed a recent shaving error led her to believe it was her brother-in-law. It smelled good, more like citrus than her husband's old-fashioned bay rum. She closed her eyes and imagined the faraway island where Ash had probably purchased it, a combination of exotic fruits held out to him by a half-naked woman with dark eyes and even darker hair, and...
He stood up beside her, his full height leaving her staring at his thigh. It took her a moment to raise her eyes to him, and when she did, she found him staring down at the boy. "You're looking kind of tired, son," he said, reaching for one of Kathryn's satin pillows and putting it behind the boy's head.
"And it's no vonder. He's had, by anyone's standards, a hard day," Dr. Mollenoff said. "I should have expected it. It's Friday, after all."
"Payday," Charlotte said with a tight nod.
"So his father gets drunk. And for every beer Flannigan has, Davis here gets a contusion. If the man should ever discover Scotch, ve vould be in real trouble." Dr. Mollenoff cleared his throat.
Instead of responding, Ash reached into his pocket and handed the parrot a cashew nut shaped like the crescent moon. Slowly, the bird took the nut in his claw and tilted his head to get a good look at his gift, as if he was deciding whether to eat it or put it into Ash's ear. Daintily, which wasn't easy for a bird whose tail came nearly to Ashford's elbow, he brought the nut to his beak and broke off a small amount with a dark tongue that looked like leather.
"You want to give him one?" Ash asked the boy after having shown by example that there was nothing to be frightened of. It was all Charlotte could do to keep from nodding herself.
The boy smiled and his misshapen face looked younger and less bruised.
"Go ahead, he won't hurt you," Ash assured him.
The boy held out a second nut to the bird. "Don't be afraid," Ash told him. "You're safe here."
It was apparently the opening Dr. Mollenoff had been waiting for, and he pounced on it. "We've come to keep him safe," he said to Charlotte and then spoke to the boy. "Mrs. Vittier helps anyone vhat needs help, Davis. I think maybe she could help you."
"How?" Charlotte asked. "What is it you want me to do, Eli?"
"I vant you should get him taken from his father." He said it simply, as if it were in her power to do it, even if she could be convinced it was the right thing to do.
"Is that what you want?" she asked the boy, Davis, whose one open eye alternately watched her, the parrot, and Ash, but avoided the doctor altogether.
Davis shook his head.
"But you'd like him to stop hurting you, wouldn't you?" she asked.
The boy grimaced. "I guess," he said. It was the first full sentence he'd uttered.
"Of course you would," the doctor said. "Nobody vants he should be a punching bag."
"Let's start slowly," Charlotte said as reasonably as she could. The boy was frightened enough. "Where's his mama?" she asked the doctor.
"Died years ago in some sort of boating accident. Drowned trying to save her baby, I think."
Davis leaned back, his eyes closed.
"So it's just him and his father?" Charlotte asked.
"Every Friday." The doctor maneuvered the boy until he was lying back on the soft cushions, Kathryn's pillow beneath his head. He struggled to sit up and keep his dignity, but his eyelids drooped despite his efforts, and his body sagged tiredly against the arm of the couch. "I gave him something for the pain. Tonight at least, he'll sleep good."
"Here?" Charlotte asked, looking over her shoulder at the sound of the curved accordion door to the elevator closing in the hall. Cabot was going up to bed. The decision was apparently hers.
"Shame to wake him up," Ash said softly.
"Ssh," Liberty said, his loud voice making a mockery of the word. "Oh! Oh! Shut up, you stupid bird!"
They waited, but the bird actually had in fact shut up, and finally Charlotte sighed and nodded.
"He can spend the weekend," she told the doctor. "You tell his father that he's safe and that he can come for him Sunday night if he's stone sober. And tell him Moss Johnson will be here if he's not." Moss had been a fighter once, and there wasn't a man who lifted a glass in Oakland who didn't drink one to old Moss, who'd had to give up the ring when age had gotten the best of his reflexes. He was still a worthy adversary most men wouldn't dare cross.
"So next Friday? Vhat then?" the doctor asked, easing the boy's arm out of the sling and placing a pillow beneath it.
"We'll catch that streetcar when it stops at our corner, Eli," Charlotte said. At the very least the boy could spend his weekends with her while his father slept his anger off.
"Ach, but she's an angel, isn't she?" Eli asked Ashford, who nodded reluctantly, staring at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted wings. Eli rose and took her hands in his. "I guess He had enough up there, no
t like down here vhere ve always need."
"If you were Irish, Dr. Mollenoff, I'd say you were kissing the Blarney stone." Charlotte tried to appear annoyed, but was sure she failed. What was it Cabot always said? That face, Charlotte, is your greatest liability. When you lie, it gets in the way of your sincerity.
She saw the doctor to the door and bade him goodnight, then crept back into the parlor to take another look at her newest client.
***
"Oh, feces equitum!"
"Care to translate?" Ash asked. He recognized a curse when he heard one, even if it was in a language he didn't speak, but didn't mind putting her on the spot just to see her wriggle out of it.
She didn't try, leaving him ashamed to think she would. "It's Latin," she said quite honestly, "for horse dung."
He felt himself grimace. She sure was blunt. And unabashed. Not like any woman he knew. "Cabot teach you that?"
She shook her head. "The seminary. Learned three languages there. A girl can't be too cultured! I can curse in Latin, Greek, and French. Merde!"
"I never realized a fine school like that would offer elementary gutter dialect," he teased. It was refreshing the way she opted not to play those foolish games so many other women did, pretending never to have heard a dirty word, pretending one had never crossed their lips. And it was electrifying to see her smile, positively heart stopping to hear her laugh.
"Oh, yes," she said, big hazel eyes sparkling devilishly in the dim lights. "I'll have you know I got an A in that course too."
"I suppose you got an A in everything." It was hard to imagine her being less than perfect at school. She was certainly perfect at everything else he'd seen her attempt. The woman seemed like a ready sponge, anxious to learn everything. No wonder Cabot found her irresistible. If Ash had anything to teach, he'd surely enjoy Charlotte as a pupil.
"Absolutely," she confirmed, while she made sure the boy was settled in, the afghan was pulled nearly up to his nose, the pillow was centered just perfectly under his head—and all without disturbing him. When she was done she turned that wonderful smile on him again and added conspiratorially. "Of course, nothing but the cursing has ever come in handy when I needed it. Except, of course, with Cabot."
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