“Oh, Maddy dear,” Stanley said, as he reached for me. The New York Times rested outside on the welcome mat. Sounds choked up through my throat. My belly contracted. Stanley hugged me to his chest. He waited for me to lift my head.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Evelyn called me last night around midnight. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew something wasn’t right. She couldn’t find the words. She spoke as if she were pushing them out one by one. I asked her if she was okay, but all she said was, ‘I feel faint.’ I wanted to send an ambulance and meet her at the hospital, but she wouldn’t listen. Over and over, she kept repeating the same words. ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.’”
“Sorry? About what?”
Stanley choked on his own tears. “The baby . . . she . . . we lost. I tried to hush her. She never forgave herself. Even at the end, it consumed her.”
“You need to sit,” I said.
“I raced over to the apartment, but I was too late. When I opened the door, I saw her on the floor—at the end of the hallway.”
I let out a deep breath.
How could Evelyn be gone? Four years ago, she had swooped in and saved me.
IN JUNE, EVELYN’S friend Tuba arranged for a boat to take the three of us—Stanley, Tuba, and me—out on the ocean to scatter Evelyn’s ashes. Tuba read from Sanskrit as the ashes swept farther out to sea.
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth;
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision:
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
A dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope;
Look well, therefore, to this day.
After the spreading of the ashes, Tuba invited us to lunch at her home. Stanley mumbled something I couldn’t hear in response to Tuba’s asking, “Stanley, you’ll stay and rest overnight, I hope. Yes? You always enjoyed the gardens when you visited with Evelyn.”
“I . . . I . . .” Stanley looked confused. Tuba was a close friend of Evelyn’s, but Stanley held a position on the periphery of their circle.
“Of course, Maddy, you must stay as well,” Tuba said. “Let me show you the blue garden.” She touched Stanley’s arm gently. “What do you say? Will you stay?”
My heart skipped a beat. The idea of a blue garden belonged to Vinni. She had shared it with me, but it was her vision.
Stanley looked at me as if he didn’t know what to say. He had just scattered his former wife’s ashes. His white hair was blown to the side from the ocean’s breeze, and he kept clearing his throat, complaining about a constant drip that had started two weeks ago. He removed his light jacket, revealing a rumpled long-sleeved shirt. A lonely old man had replaced his usual meticulous-looking self.
TUBA WASTED NO time sharing her thoughts as we sat on the patio. She directed her focus to me, even twisting in her chair so I could see the directness of her intent. “Maddy, it’s your turn to continue where Evelyn left off.”
What was she trying to tell me?
“Evelyn loved you the way she would her own child. When she was alive, I promised her I’d help you show your work. I intend to keep that promise. No question. But I want you to consider a mother-love exhibit.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“You’re not the only mother in pain,” Tuba said.
“Are you asking me to paint other mothers who have lost their children?”
Tuba leaned in, bending slightly from her slim hips. “I’m asking you to look beyond yourself. Then paint what you want. You’re the artist,” she said. She did not coat her voice with kindness, but neither did she ice over it. She spoke plainly.
Evelyn had lived the kind of life she wanted. I wasn’t sure if this was a bad thing until I thought about her dying alone on the floor of her home. I didn’t want to die like that. My mother died alone when she shut the garage door and started the engine. My father died alone at home in the chair where he read the newspaper. His bony knees poked out between the edges of his Bermuda shorts and his knee-high socks. When they found him, spit and vomit had run down his chin onto the front of his shirt.
Tuba’s words stunned me into silence. I needed time to be alone. I would be selfish with my pain. Dredge it up to feed me. Although we had finished lunch, no one moved. A plate of sugar cookies sat untouched in the center of the table.
“In the early years, Evelyn spent much time here,” Tuba said.
“The early years?”
Stanley spoke up. “After the baby died, Evelyn needed a place to rest. She found it here.” Discomfort settled on his face, but then he said, “This place gave her a refuge—something I never found a way to do.” His voice turned hoarse. “Evelyn loved many people. I was just one of them.”
The beauty of the surroundings softened the gentle storm behind Stanley’s words. I looked at him, sitting across the table. A silver spoon balanced on the edge of a crystal sugar bowl. Tuba moved her chair away from the fold of the tablecloth resting on her lap. I stood up and faced the garden to the west of the dining room. Shades of blue covered the ground. I walked down the wide stone staircase behind her. Stanley extended his hand, and I took it.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” he said.
“Vinni wanted a blue garden when she grew up. She loved the color blue. We used to walk past a flower stand on the way to school, and she’d stop and point to all the blue flowers she wanted in her garden: hydrangea, iris, bluebells, cornflower blues.”
“A child is a blessing,” Tuba said, without turning around to see my face.
This time, I let the words ride over me.
As the path narrowed, Stanley fell back.
Blue was everywhere. I made a mental note to bring Vinni here when she returned. I knew she would love it. Tuba stopped and turned around, waving her hands gracefully in the air. Her face glowed.
“Wasn’t it Monet who said, ‘More than anything I must have flowers, always, always’? Yes, I think it was.” She laughed lightly to herself. I drifted as she spoke, floating to a place where I heard Vinni’s voice. I’m here, Mommy. Come find me. I sat down on an iron bench placed on a patch of perfectly manicured grass. All around me towered blue spires of delphinium with petals like schoolgirl petticoats. A circled pattern of narcissi claimed the far edge to the right of the lower tier. Heads of blue hydrangea bushes filled in the back like the mezzanine in a theater. Tiny buds of forget-me-nots bloomed inside carefree clusters of violet.
A conversation beat in my head. Mommy, I’m taller now. I’m singing. Come find me.
How I missed my girl!
TUBA ARRANGED FOR her driver to take Stanley and me home. I looked out the window at the cars speeding by and thought about Evelyn. If only she had been here, I would have gone to her and asked, “How much longer must I wait?” But a dead person’s advice doesn’t travel.
It wasn’t more than three weeks after we scattered Evelyn’s ashes in the ocean that Stanley offered me the opportunity to buy Evelyn’s apartment. It was Kay who encouraged me to buy it.
“Think of it as continuing who you’ve become,” she said.
“And that is?”
“Someone new.”
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY morning, Kay asked me to go running with her. I agreed because I had already turned her down twice. Being friends since we were ten was too long to ignore, but most of all, we missed each other’s company.
In the middle of a pit stop, with both our heads lowered, arms resting on our knees as we sat on a park bench, Kay blurted out something that had obviously been on her mind for years. “I never understood why you changed when you married Steve. Your Saturday painting class . . . you gave it up because of him, didn’t you?”
She already knew the answer.<
br />
“And Evelyn? She brought it all back. She helped you see what you could do. But now she’s gone, so it’s up to you, dammit, to keep on painting. Buy her place and make it yours. You’ve got a gift. You’ve always been the one who had the talent.”
Kay’s mother died of a heart attack in her sleep when Kay was twenty-seven years old. Her father rolled over one morning and noticed his wife had stopped breathing. A year later, he died the same way. Kay withstood it all without missing more than two days’ work when her mother died and one and a half days for her father’s wake and funeral. He died on a Saturday, leaving behind a spotless ranch house with a newly paved patio off the kitchen. He had laid the stones himself the previous summer.
People in pairs or alone ran by us to a silent beat, unaware—or were they?—that life was so fucking unfair.
Kay took my hand inside both of hers. “I want you to be happy,” she said.
“I know you do,” I whispered.
My mother was nothing like Kay’s. My mother died alone when she shut the garage door and started the engine.
I’ VE TOLD YOU twice now.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JOHN D’ORFINI COULDN’T LET GO OF SOMETHING THE nephew said about his uncle, the man who owned the garage where they found Hilda’s car. On the second interview at the station house in Brooklyn, the nephew—whom John D’Orfini described to me as “not the brightest bulb”—called his uncle “the fixer.”
“The what?” I asked.
“The fixer. The community fixer. According to the nephew, his uncle helped people fix their problems.”
“What kinds of problems?” I asked.
“Money, immigration, family disputes. Anything that a bankroll and a strong arm could fix. I think the uncle was sort of like the godfather of the neighborhood. Russian immigrants who spoke little English moved into the neighborhood. Dear old Uncle stepped in, and I don’t think his involvement was limited to language. I’ve talked to a few neighbors on his block, and they speak of the guy like he was a saint. At his wake, hundreds and hundreds stood outside in line, waiting to pay their respects.”
I found out more later. Uncle, although legally blind, presented an immaculate appearance. People remembered him as meticulous. Whether he dropped in at Mueller’s Bakery or had an appointment at the dentist, he wore a suit and tie and a monogrammed shirt with French cuffs. His dark sunglasses sparkled, without a trace of dust on either lens. Polished Italian leather shoes in black, brown, and burgundy coordinated with his custom-tailored suits.
JOHN D’ORFINI CALLED me on Thursday.
“I was thinking you might want to come to the Brooklyn police station tomorrow,” he said. “Let the nephew see you. You can’t ask him questions. Let me do the talking. Do you believe you can do that? Just sit and be quiet?”
“Probably not, but I’ll try,” I said. I visualized John D’Orfini in his office with his phone attached to his ear, his face about to brighten from one side to the other until it spread over his forehead.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE interrogation room was cold. “Tell me about your relationship with your uncle.” This was John D’Orfini, obsessed with solving the crime committed on his watch.
“I told the other cop here last week. I didn’t see him much. He was kind of a busy guy. I mean, he couldn’t see good or nothing, but he still got dressed like a dude every morning.”
“I thought you didn’t see him much.”
“Who’s telling the story here, man?”
While the nephew spoke, he scratched at his chin, where a cluster of red pimples looked ready to burst pus. John D’Orfini slammed the table and made me jump, spilling the water down the front of my turtleneck. He reached across the table toward the nephew, who was as surprised as I was by the noise.
“Whaddaya want to go and do that for? Look, Uncle and me didn’t talk much. That’s all I’m saying.”
“That’s not all you’re saying, unless you want to have more to cleanup than that sick pus on your chin.”
I felt a hint of compassion for this twenty-six-year-old, acne-ridden slouch who was counting on the money he hoped his uncle had left him so he could open a sub shop. “Cash, ya know. And I like the smell of red onions on my fingers.”
He rubbed his hands on the sides of his pants, as if they were wet. Rolling them over and over. Then he asked, “Can I smoke? Makes me remember things.”
To my astonishment, John D’Orfini reached into his pocket, took out a pack of Parliaments, and slid them across the table to the nephew. Since when was he a smoker? Or was this part of the guise when Country Cop came to the city and played with the NYPD?
“What do you know about the car in your uncle’s garage?”
“Nothing. Honest, man. Nothing. Shit, I was surprised to see it there. That’s why I called my buddy at the station. I mean, I wanted the thing outta there so’s I could sell the place. I didn’t want no lady’s car.”
“How did you know it was a lady’s car?” John D’Orfini picked up the pack of cigarettes and placed it back inside his pocket.
“It was powder blue, man.”
John D’Orfini didn’t buy that Uncle was a saint, but he ended the conversation with the nephew on a sweet note.
“Confuse them. Always confuse the suspect,” he’d say.
“Well, thanks for coming down to the station. Sorry for your loss.”
I raised my eyebrows into a question reeking of profanity.
“One more thing. I want you to look at Ms. Stewart and tell her you know nothing about her missing daughter. I want you to tell her how sorry you are that she hasn’t seen her little girl in almost four years.”
“You want me to say all that?”
John D’Orfini nodded. I stood up and walked to John D’Orfini’s side of the table.
The nephew took an exaggerated drag on his cigarette and exhaled circles in full moons. I stepped out of the way of the smoke.
“I’m real sorry to hear this, ma’am. Real sorry.”
He gave the abbreviated version.
John D’Orfini opened the door, and the nephew walked out, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
WHEN THE NEPHEW was no longer in sight, I said, “I don’t know about this guy and his uncle. The fixer? I mean, come on.”
“If Hilda’s car was found in Uncle’s garage, then I guarantee you Uncle had something to do with it getting there.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a character in a movie,” I said.
He looked at me hard so I couldn’t turn away. “You need a break.”
This was what I loved about him.
“Let’s stop for a cup of tea,” he said.
WE TOOK A booth in a corner in the back of a coffee place that boasted twenty-seven coffees guaranteed to reboot your metabolism. As John D’Orfini walked up to the counter, I looked out the window, wondering how I became a childless mother. Grief washed over me like a wave. It came without warning—so strong it stopped me no matter where I was. If I was driving in the car, I missed signs. If I was walking down Fifth Avenue on my way to the library, I missed sight of the lions outside until I found myself at Union Square, twenty-eight blocks from my destination. If I was brushing my teeth at night, grief stabbed me in the gut until I hunched over the sink, barely able to spit. Grief struck me down, but acknowledging the statistics wasn’t an option. And yet there were times—times that I would never speak aloud—that made me want to put my head down and exhale a final breath.
Hadn’t Kay told me she wanted me to be happy?
What was I doing renting a room across from a bakery in Brooklyn?
Watching young girls being shuttled down an alleyway in the middle of the night, wondering each time if I might see Vinni. Praying I wouldn’t. Was it all a weird coincidence that I had stumbled upon something bad two buildings down from Mueller’s Bakery?
JOHN D’ORFINI LOOKED at me from across the coffee shop. Both our mouths
turned up—not into the shape of a smile, but rather into an acknowledgment of caring.
Forgetting the pain in the daylight was impossible. Months ago, when John D’Orfini had walked me home and stayed the night, it had been under the shield of darkness. Some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I slipped my hand under the sheets and stroked myself. I thought about John D’Orfini and released the way a woman is meant to—with or without a partner.
“Where are you?” John D’Orfini commented on my faraway look as he stood at the booth with two steaming Styrofoam cups in his hand. I wondered how his expression might change if I responded by saying, Under the sheets.
He placed my tea down and slid across from me. The warmth from the cup felt good inside my hands. I reached for two packets of sugar and stirred them in my sweet detective’s cup. His eyes softened. I pushed his cup closer. He took a sip.
“What are you hiding?”
For a second, I worried he knew about my room across from Mueller’s, but then I realized that he was talking about something more intangible. A feeling? A runaway thought?
“I want to turn back the clock and do it all again. I want to begin at the beginning with Vinni, from when she was a baby. I want to try harder. I want to keep her safe. That night at the end of the summer when Hilda and Rudy invited Vinni and me to dinner . . . I remember how Hilda focused on Vinni when she talked. I thought she found her engaging, the way everyone did. Vinni had a way about her beyond her young years. She spoke in complete thoughts. I mean, my God, she was just eight years old! But I forgot! I honestly forgot that she was so young, because she got things. She fit into new places and situations so easily. She wasn’t afraid.”
I stopped and briefly touched the fingertips of my detective. His hands wrapped around his cup as he lifted it to his mouth. I looked into his kind eyes.
A Matter of Chance Page 17