Without a Word

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “Known what?”

  “That Sally was going to take off.”

  “How could you have?”

  “Something she said the week she disappeared.” He put one hand over his eyes. His shoulders shuddered once. “I’ve never told this to anyone,” he said, looking at me now. “She’d taken Madison to see Dr. Bechman that afternoon, and after dinner, she came down. She looked awful, pale and out of it in a way. She sat there, where you are now, and she leaned back, her head on the cushions so that she wasn’t looking at me, and in this dreamy voice she said that Bechman’s receptionist had told Madison she was leaving.” He stopped and shook his head.

  “And?”

  “Then Sally said, ‘Can you imagine a more perfect job? You’d have unlimited access to all those drug samples doctors always have by the drawerful. You could take something anytime you needed to. You’d never, ever have to feel pain. You could just float away into a world of nothingness.’”

  He covered his face again. “Maybe if I’d said something, if I’d done something, maybe she wouldn’t have gone.”

  “You don’t know she went on her own volition. Besides, if she was that unhappy, what could you have done?”

  Ted got up, walked over to a small white lacquer desk with drawers down one side, opened the top drawer and took out a card. He handed it to me as he walked me to the door. As I was about to thank him again, he put his arms around me.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come back. Let me know what’s happening. Or if you need anything. Anything at all. Or bring a book. You can curl up on the bed and read. Bring him, too.”

  He had tears in his eyes when he stepped back. I could still smell the gel he used to keep his hair slicked down as I walked through the lobby and out into the street.

  I looked up at Leon’s apartment, wondering in the end what I’d have to tell this man, and there was Madison, looking down from the corner window. I lifted my hand and waved, but as soon as I did, she let the curtain fall back, and she disappeared.

  CHAPTER 12

  I was going to go home, make some notes, check and see if there was any further response from Classmates.com. There was some research I wanted to do, too, some thinking as well. I wanted to look up Madison’s disorder and see what drugs were used to control it, see if there was anything else available that might help her. I knew I was being silly, or perhaps overly hopeful. What chance was there that I could find something the doctor hadn’t considered?

  Something about this case was different. I’d think of what I wanted to do, or what I should be doing, then half the time I’d head off in another direction and do something else. It was as if someone was holding on to me, pulling at me, telling me, no, not that, this. Is that what had happened to Sally, too? Had she gone out for a breath of fresh air, maybe to get away from Madison’s chattering or Leon’s silence? Had someone or something taken hold of her, pulling her away from what she wanted to do, what she thought she should do?

  It would be easy to suppose that it had been a who that took hold of Sally, literally took hold of her. But what if it wasn’t a who? What if it had been a what instead, like whatever it was that had taken hold of me?

  What if, I kept thinking, but I couldn’t finish the question. I was still standing there, across the street from Madison’s apartment, thinking of it that way now, Madison’s building, Madison’s apartment, the kid pulling on my consciousness, filling it up, thinking of her mother, Sally, escaping to Ted Fowler’s serene apartment so that she could read in peace.

  I crossed the street and kept on going, back to where there’d been a C. Abele that had turned out to be Charles, not Celia. There were so few Abeles in the city, I was thinking as I approached the building. It wouldn’t be too big a stretch to think some of them knew each other, or maybe were related. I crossed the street, found a step to sit on and took out my cell phone, calling information and getting the numbers of the two Abeles I’d found in Brooklyn, one in Queens, six in Manhattan, including the one who lived across the street from where I was sitting. Late Sunday morning, chances are I’d find some of them home.

  Claire Abele never heard of a Celia Abele but she was very nice about my having called. Richard Abele was home, too. “Wrong number,” he said, and hung up on me. I couldn’t blame him either. There were so many calls lately you wanted to hang up on, people who wanted, one way or another, to get some of the money in your bank account into theirs.

  Harrison and J. might have been out to brunch or at the gym. Harrison had an answering machine so I left a message. J. didn’t, so I didn’t. Louise had clearly been sleeping but she didn’t seem at all angry at me for waking her up. Unfortunately, she didn’t know any Celia Abele. I was almost ready to give up when Philip Abele answered his phone.

  “She’s my brother’s ex,” he said. “Only…” And then he clammed up. Who the hell was I to be asking personal questions, he might have been thinking. I would have. “What do you want with her?” he said. Protective? Or just another cranky New Yorker?

  “It’s about her old job,” I told him. “I’m working for a family whose little girl went to Dr. Bechman and I need to talk to Celia about—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “No. No. No. I can’t help you out here.”

  “Well, do you think Charles might?” I asked, making an assumption based on proximity and the fact that he was all I had left at the moment.

  “That would be up to him,” he said. And the line went dead.

  I could have just dialed Charles’s number. If there was a polite way to disturb a stranger, I suspect that would have been it. But I didn’t call. I got up and walked across the street, finding the bell that said “C. Abele” and ringing it. But when the intercom crackled and he asked who was there, I wasn’t sure I’d get anything more this way than I would have on the phone.

  “I’m looking for Celia,” I said, “on an urgent matter.”

  My day was full of surprises. Charles Abele buzzed me in. I pushed the door open, held it with my foot and looked back at the bell. He was on the third floor. Dash and I took the stairs.

  He was standing in the doorway when we got there, his curly hair a bit messy, his shirt a washed-out-looking plaid in blues and grays, his pants baggy corduroys, looking as if he’d slept in them. Though, on second thought, I doubted that Charles Abele was sleeping any better than Leon Spector did.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing your Sunday,” I said.

  He stepped back, making room for me and Dashiell, closing the door behind us, walking over to a light green couch, soft pillows nestled in the corners, a glass coffee table in front of it covered with sections of the Times. There were two black leather chairs facing the couch. I sat in one of those, Dashiell sliding down to smell the nubby pale wall-to-wall.

  “What now?” he asked, a man as weary as my client but who seemed to be, unfortunately for him, far more connected to his own pain.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said, hoping he might tell me what had already occurred that made him look as if the bones in his body could barely hold him erect.

  “What is it you want with Celia? What’s the urgent matter?”

  “You’ve had enough of those,” I said, trying again.

  But Charles Abele wasn’t having any. He sat up straighter and looked me over. “Can we get to the point, Miss…?”

  “Alexander,” I told him. “Rachel. I was hired by the father of a little girl who was a patient of the doctor Celia used to work for.”

  “Madison Spector?”

  I nodded. “I wanted to talk to Celia about Madison because she knew her before she stopped talking.”

  He nodded. He knew that part, too.

  “She lives two blocks away,” he said.

  “You’re the only Abele listed in the neighborhood. Is she unlisted?”

  “She went back to using her maiden name,” he said. “Daniels. They live on West Eleventh Street.”

  “They?”

  “Celia
and JoAnn.”

  I’d already been too nosy. I had no legal status and this man owed me nothing. But I did tilt my head, the way Dashiell does, to show him that my interest hadn’t waned.

  “The baby.”

  “Mr. Abele,” I said, “every time I ask you a personal question, I feel my mother turning over in her grave. I wasn’t brought up to be, well, I know I’m being very intrusive. But there’s a little girl suspected of murdering her doctor and she won’t speak. She won’t tell anyone that she didn’t do that. Or that she did. And I’m trying, despite some awful odds, to…”

  “I understand what you’re trying to do, Miss Alexander. What happened to Madison is heartbreaking. Anyone would want to help.”

  “Then you know about it? It wasn’t in the paper.”

  “Celia was very fond of her.”

  “That’s the first I heard of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “Anyone being fond of Madison.”

  “People are fond of all sorts of people,” he said, “even people they shouldn’t be fond of.”

  I nodded. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “She said she was quitting her job. Just like that. No discussion.” He pointed to himself and then to me, as if I were Celia telling him the bad news. “The thing is, my writing hasn’t taken off.” He laughed. Perhaps more of an expulsion of breath than a laugh. “I have three novels out, but I haven’t made it to mid-list yet. What I’m saying is that we couldn’t live on my advances. We needed Celia’s income and she’d agreed to give me five years, well, five more years. Unless…”

  I waited, but Dashiell didn’t. He got up and went over to Charles Abele, dumping his big blocky head in Charles’s lap, the well-honed habit of an experienced therapy dog, helping when help was needed.

  “But we hadn’t gotten pregnant, so…” He waved a hand in the air, let it alight on Dashiell’s head. “He’s a very nice dog,” he said.

  “Thanks. Did she say why she was quitting so suddenly?”

  “She did. She’s very forthcoming, my wife.” He laughed. I didn’t know what was funny but I neglected to say so. “At least she was that day. She said she was pregnant so she had to leave.”

  “But it’s against the law to…”

  “Not that she was asked to leave. Not that. That she had to leave because it was Dr. Bechman’s baby and it would be very awkward for her to remain there, what with the doctor being married, too.”

  “Oh.”

  “No big thing her being honest, you know, because we already knew it couldn’t have been my baby, and we hadn’t been trying artificial insemination. It cost more than we could afford. So, one way or another, I would have figured out that the honeymoon was over, wouldn’t you think?”

  “I would,” I said, understanding why he’d asked me “What now?” when I’d walked in, understanding the laugh, too.

  “She said she was moving out.”

  “Did she say that she and Dr. Bechman…”

  He shook his head. “The doctor had no intention of breaking up his family. Only mine.” He sucked in his lower lip, stroked Dashiell’s head, then continued. “I told her she didn’t have to do that, that she didn’t have to leave. I told her I’d raise the kid with her, I’d love the kid, I’d give the kid my name, I’d do whatever, if she would stop seeing Bechman. She said she couldn’t do that. She said she wouldn’t do that.”

  “So she moved out.”

  “Yes, she did.” Big breath.

  “And got another job?”

  Charles Abele shook his head slowly from side to side. “Bechman paid the bills.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It was.” He sighed. “I don’t imagine Mrs. Bechman will keep up the payments, do you?”

  “Mrs. Bechman knows about this?”

  “No, I was just being…”

  I nodded. “And who could blame you?” I said. “Mr. Abele, a few minutes ago you said ‘the baby.’ But wasn’t this about five years ago? Because my understanding is that Ms. Peach has been…”

  “She’s a little over four. Four and three months. JoAnn, that’s what they named her. Eric only had boys. He was thrilled to pieces, she said, Celia said. He doted on her. I do, too.”

  “You see her?”

  He bent his head, figuring out, I thought, how to explain this peculiar arrangement to me. But he needn’t have bothered. I thought I understood it already. If people could love a dog that bit them repeatedly, why couldn’t Charles Abele love the child his ex-wife had had with her lover? And perhaps the ex-wife as well.

  “It could be viewed as merely a practical matter, free babysitting. But it wasn’t that. It was more like a kindness, giving me something to make up for what was taken away.”

  “How did it start?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I can’t really say. Things came up during the pregnancy, financial matters, social matters. And then there was the insurance. It was, is, in both our names, and of course it was awkward for him to be at the birth—how could he explain an eleven-hour absence?”

  “So you were there?”

  “I was. I saw her come into the world. I held her when she was a minute old and carried her to her mother. I fell in love with Eric Bechman’s daughter before he did.”

  “And continue to visit and see her?”

  “And love her. I’m Uncle Charles,” he said, his eyes shining, one tear falling. “I have the same visiting schedule a divorced dad would have. Plus extra time when Celia needs me to babysit.”

  “You do that for her?”

  “I do it to be with JoAnn. And for Celia.”

  “So you and Celia get along?”

  “Most of the time.” He raised a hand, dropped it back onto Dashiell’s neck. “We’ve even talked about me taking JoAnn during the day so that Celia can go back to work. She’ll have to now. She has no choice.”

  “Do you think she’d talk to me, about Madison?”

  He lifted a hand, holding up a pointer, picking up the phone and dialing. But then he slid out from under Dash’s head, got up and walked out of the room before she answered, choosing to explain things in private.

  Men killed over smaller issues than this, I thought. He seemed to be a very gentle man, a loving man, a forgiving man. He seemed to be a hopeful man, too, perhaps ridiculously so. Had he been thinking that if he were the perfect ex, the loving uncle, the man Celia could always count on, still, that one day her relationship with Bechman would fall apart, that one day he’d have not only the woman he loved, but the child as well?

  Of course, appearances could be deceiving and what things looked like might not be the way things were. Hadn’t my client said that the first time we’d met?

  There was a wall of books, a desk nearby, a stack of papers on the desk, a laptop, a printer, a mug with pens and pencils, probably a pile of unpaid bills somewhere, too. Along the widest of the bookshelves, there were framed pictures of JoAnn as an infant, JoAnn sitting up, standing, walking, on a swing, JoAnn as a toddler, JoAnn at four and JoAnn with her mother, a pretty woman with straight blonde hair, like Madison’s, and serious blue eyes. Forthcoming, he’d said. God save us all.

  Charles Abele came back into the room, put the phone in the cradle and handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “She said you could call her,” he told me.

  “She won’t see me?” I asked.

  “She will. But she wanted you to call first. She’s…” He was still standing, his arms at his side, looking off to the side, toward the pictures of JoAnn, who, unlike Madison, smiled for the camera. “She’s having a bad day. A bad…” His voice trailed off.

  “That’s understandable,” I said. “I’ll call her tomorrow.” I got up. “You’ve been so gracious, so helpful. I can’t thank you enough.” I put out my hand to shake his, but instead he took it and tucked it against his side, walking me to the door as if we were old friends.

  He let go of my hand and opened the door. “Do you think Madison did it?”
he whispered.

  “I couldn’t say. I suppose it’s possible.”

  He shook his head.

  “Not possible?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s just that…” He’d been looking down. He met my eyes now. “Having a kid, it’s not like buying a pair of shoes, they pinch, you return them or you throw them away. I don’t understand bringing a child into the world and then abandoning her.”

  He might have meant Sally, but I had the strong feeling it was Bechman he was talking about, Bechman who’d stolen Charles’s wife and the child that should have been his. And then what, visited once or twice a week? How much more time could he have spent with them when he had another family to care for in Larchmont, his real family?

  I began to wonder if beneath the sadness there was a fulminating rage, and if so, if that rage was on behalf of his “niece,” or perhaps for himself, for the damage Bechman had done to him.

  And what of Celia, living on her own with JoAnn, waiting for those crumbs of time Eric Bechman could spare for them? How angry had she been? And was the “bad day” she was having today nothing, perhaps, compared to the bad days she had when Bechman was still alive?

  CHAPTER 13

  We took the long way home, weaving in and out of my favorite Village blocks, then discovering one of the last street fairs of the season, mostly people selling things they no longer wanted, an old manual typewriter, used books, stuffed animals, some with a missing ear or tail, that had once belonged to kids who were now in college, a bicycle that looked as if it might be okay after a few days in the repair shop, shoes with run-down heels, vintage clothes and just plain used clothes, some embarrassingly worn. One person’s junk, another person’s treasure. That wasn’t only true for porcelain statues, lamps without shades, the shawl your grandmother crocheted that was filled with terrible memories rather than warmth. It was true for dogs, an abandoned mutt at the shelter, at least one of the lucky few, becoming someone else’s beloved companion, and for people, a lover one woman dumps becoming the perfect man for someone else.