"Everywhere That Mary Went" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scottoline Lisa)

21

Ifeel like everyone’s watching me the next morning when I get off the elevator and walk to my desk. The secretaries in my area gaze at me bathetically, to them I’m the Young Widow Times Two. A partner glances back at me, wondering whether my billable hours will fall off. A messenger pushing a mail cart hurries by with a sideways glance. His look says, The broad must be some kind of jinx.

Why are they thinking about me? Why aren’t they thinking about Brent?

I feel shaky, disoriented. Nothing seems familiar here, least of all Brent’s desk. There’s a blotter with floral edges where there used to be a friendly clutter of wind-up toys and a rubber-band gun. Brent’s mug-WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE, AN INFORMATION BOOTH?-is gone. A calendar with fuzzy kittens has replaced a portrait of Luciano Pavarotti. The air smells like nothing at all; I can’t believe I miss the tang of Obsession. What I miss is Brent. He deserved a long and happy life. He deserved to be singing his heart out somewhere, for the sheer joy of it.

Somebody’s grandmother is sitting in Brent’s chair. She introduces herself as Miss Pershing and refuses to call me anything but Miss DiNunzio. Her dull gray hair is pulled back into a French twist, and she wears a pink Fair Isle sweater held together at the top by a gold-plated chain. She’s been a secretary in the Estates Department for thirty years. She brings me coffee on a tray.

It makes me want to cry.

I close my door and stare at the pile of mail on my desk. Without Brent, it’s not organized into Good and Evil and totters precariously to the left. Mixed in with the thick case summaries and fuck-you letters are batches of envelopes in somber pastel shades. I remember them from before. Sympathy cards, dispensing a generic sentiment in every cursive iteration imaginable:My thoughts/feelings are with you/your loved ones at this time of difficulty/of sorrow. May you have the comfort/solace of your loved ones/faith in God at this time.

I can’t bring myself to read any of the mail, especially the sympathy cards. They’re only a comfort to people who don’t know anyone who died.

I poke at a pink card on the top of the mail, and the tower topples over. It fans out across my desk, revealing at its center a bulky manila envelope bearing my name scrawled in pen.

Odd.

Miss Pershing’s sheared the top off the envelope, and so neatly that there’s barely any tearing. I open it. Inside is a piece of blue notepaper which saysFROM THE DESK OF JACKIE O at the top and reads:

Mary-

I cleaned out Brent’s desk. Thank you for everything, and for being so good to Brent. You may need this.

Love, Jack

Stuck in the envelope is Brent’s rubber-band gun. I smile, and am trying not to cry, when I remember the notes.

The notes! Brent kept them for me. Where are they?

I ransack my desk, but they’re not there. I rush out to Miss Pershing’s desk, and she watches, aghast, as I slam through the drawers. They’re all empty except for typing paper and Stalling letter-head.

Where are the notes? Brent would have put them someplace safe. He took care of me.

I run back to my office and call Jack, but he’s not at home. I leave a message, asking him to call back. I feel panicked. It doesn’t make sense that Jack would take them, but maybe he’ll know where they are. I still have my hand on the telephone receiver when it rings, jangling in my palm.

“DiNunzio?” barks Starankovic. His voice has a Monday-morning-I’m-refreshed punch to it. “You changed your number? I had to go through the switchboard.”

“I’m sorry-”

“When are the interviews?”

I cringe. I’d totally forgotten. “My secretary-”

“Don’t blame it on him, DiNunzio. Set ’em up today or I file the motion.”

“Bernie-”

Click.

I hang up the phone by the pile of disordered mail. I should straighten it up. It’s the Next Thing to do and I should do it. Dictate, return phone calls, back-fuck. I pick up an envelope, a white hand-delivery from Thomas, Main amp; Chandler, the third firm in the holy trinity. It must be a response to a motion I filed last week. Last week, when Brent was telling me to call the cops.

What did the Mike-voice say?I tried. I tried.

I put the envelope back down, feeling empty inside. Hollow. Aching. Exactly how I felt after Mike died, and how I was beginning not to feel before Brent was killed. I let the leaden sensation leech into my bones, into my soul. A little white pillowcase of a soul that turned black the instant of my birth, and even blacker when the men I love were killed on my account.

Suddenly, someone is clearing his throat directly above me. I look up into the bland visage of Martin H. Chatham IV.

“How do you tolerate it?” he says, with as much emotion as I’ve ever heard from him.

“Stand what?”

“That blasted clock!” Martin sits down in one of the Stalling-issue chairs in front of my desk and crosses his legs.

I look over my shoulder. 9:15. “You get used to it. Sort of.”

“I don’t see how. But you’ll be vacating this office after June,n’est-ce pas? When we make our new litigation partners.” His tone is oh-so-controlled, but I’m in no mood to fence.

“I hope so.”

“Come on, Mary. We both know you’re on track.”

“I am? I guess I haven’t thought about it lately.”

Martin’s face changes, as if he’s remembered his manners. “Yes. Of course. I’m sorry about your secretary.”

“Thank you.”

“Damn drunk drivers. It’s a terrible way to go.”

I flash on the car as it explodes into Brent’s body. And Mike’s. I feel stunned.

Martin tosses some papers onto my desk. “Here are a couple of deposition notices inHarbison’s. They’re for the two supervisors, Breslin and Grayboyes.”

I should call him on it, but I feel upset, off balance. I bear down and say the Next Thing. “I talked to Starankovic. It’s taken care of.”

He looks mildly surprised. “Did you postpone them?”

“Yes. Starankovic wants to take some employee interviews. I told him I’d think about it.”

“I know you. You won’t let him do that.”

“I won’t?”

“You? Voluntarily expose your employees to interviews with the enemy, without benefit of counsel? So that they can say anything? It goes against all those hot-blooded instincts of yours, even if there is precedent for it.”

“He’s going to file a motion if we don’t consent.”

“Bah! Is the man a glutton for punishment?” Martin can always tap into the our-team-kicked-ass mentality that flows like blood at Stalling.

“He might win it. Even if he doesn’t, it’ll cost Harbison’s more to fight the motion than it will to let him do the interviews.”

“Money’s no object, Mary, when it’s the client’s.”

I don’t bother forcing a smile.

“By the by, I understand you’ll be handling the new age case for Harbison’s. The plaintiff’s named Hart, right?” He gets up, tugging at suspenders needlepointed with flying owls.

“Right.”

“Sam wasn’t sure you were ready, but I told him it was time we gave you a case of your own. If you need a hand, let me know. I’ll keep it to myself,” he says with a wink.

He’s about to leave when Ned suddenly sticks his head in the doorway. His jacket is off and one hand is hidden behind his back. “Mary?” he says, in the split second before he spots Martin.

“Young Waters!” Martin booms. “What brings you up to this neck of the woods?”

“I thought I’d stop in to see Mary.” Ned beams at me from the doorway. His smile says, We’re lovers now.

I can’t help but return the smile. I feel it too. Bonded to him invisibly, by virtue of the fact that he’s been that close. When there’s not many who have.

Martin tugs at Ned’s shirtsleeve like an insistent child. “Haven’t seen much of you lately at the club.”

“No. I haven’t been there.”

“Working hard or hardly working?”

“I just haven’t had a chance to sail much yet this spring.”

“Too bad. I got out on Sunday. Had a beautiful day, a beautiful day. You’re welcome along anytime. Alida would love another lesson,” he says, with measurable warmth. His hand rests on Ned’s shoulder. “She’s darn good for a sixteen-year-old, don’t you agree?”

“She’s good,” Ned says.

Martin turns to me. “Waters here taught Alida more in one afternoon than that school in Annapolis did all last summer.” He slaps Ned on the back. “How about this Sunday, my man? What are you doing this weekend? Why don’t you head over for brunch? We’ll spend all afternoon on the water. What do you say?”

“Uh, I’m busy.” Ned flashes me a grin. His eyes are bright, and his look is undisguised. “I have big plans.”

Martin looks from Ned to me. His smile fades slowly. “Do my eyes deceive me?”

“It depends on what they’re telling you,” Ned says, with a laugh.

“Ned-” I’m not sure how to finish the sentence. I don’t want Ned telling Martin about us. Not when I’m about to break us up, at least temporarily.

“What?” Ned asks, smiling. “Don’t you want to tell the world? I do.”

Martin looks back and forth between us again. “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” he says.

I’m not sure I like Martin’s tone. Neither does Ned, who bristles. “Something wrong, Martin?”

“With you and DiNunzio?” Martin asks. “Of course not. I’m surprised, that’s all.”

“So am I,” Ned answers lightly. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I shoot Ned a warning glance.

Martin pats Ned’s shoulder. “Don’t take offense, Waters.”

“None taken,” Ned says abruptly, brushing past Martin to me. “Now if you’ll excuse us.” He whips his hand out from behind his back, but it’s covered by a gray wool jacket. The jacket conceals something huge, almost as big as his arm.

Martin clears his throat behind Ned. “Well. It looks like you won’t be needing me.”

“I can handle it from here,” Ned calls back, and Martin closes the door. Ned beams at me. “Guess what the bulge is. And it’s not that I’m happy to see you, even though I am happy to see you.”

“You didn’t have to do anything.”

“I know that. Now guess. It’s in disguise.” He wiggles the jacket, and it makes a crinkling sound.

“A really big muffin?”

“You’re half right.” He snaps the jacket off with a magician’s flourish. Underneath is a full bouquet of rich red roses, wrapped in cellophane. “Ta-da!”

“Jeez, Ned!”

He hands the bouquet to me and kisses me on the cheek. “These are for you, sweetheart.”

I take the crinkly bouquet and feel myself blushing. The flowers are beautiful. The man is charming. I am in love. How am I supposed to give this up? How am I supposed to hurt him?

“Do you like them?” he asks worriedly.

“They’re lovely.” I avoid his eye.

Suddenly, he takes my face in his hands and gives me a long, deep kiss. I return it over the sweet smell of the flowers, feeling touched and confused at the same time.

“I missed you last night. I really did.” He kisses me again, but I pull away.

“You sent Judy.”

“To take care of you. But she’s no substitute, right?”

I nod. The roses are a cardinal red, and the underside of each petal has a dense and velvety texture. There are twelve in all. They must have cost a fortune.

“I did get you a muffin, by the way.” He wrestles with the pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out a crumpled white bag the size of a hardball. “Blueberry.” He shakes it beside his ear like a light bulb. “It’s in three hundred and fifty-seven pieces at this point. Sorry about that.” He sets it down on my desk.

“Thank you.”

“You still don’t look happy. Was Martin giving you a hard time?”

“Uh, yeah. First he holds back on the two deposition notices, the ones I told you about. Then he tells me he’s the one who told Berkowitz to give me theHart case, not the other way around. I think he’s trying to save face.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That Martin wasn’t the one to suggest it to Berkowitz?”

“That’s not what Berkowitz said. Implied, anyway.”

Ned looks skeptical. “Maybe Berkowitz wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe it was Martin who suggested you get the case.”

“I don’t understand. Why would Martin champion my cause, Ned? You saw him just now.”

“That was because he wants to fix me up with his daughter. It wasn’t directed at you.”

“No?”

“No. I’d take Martin over Berkowitz any day.”

“I’d take Berkowitz over Martin any day.”

We regard each other over the flowers. We seem to be lined up on opposing sides of a class war. It breaks the mood-which is a godsend, for what I have to do.

“Is this our first fight?” he asks, with a sad smile.

“Ned-”

“Then I have something to say.” He grabs the flowers and puts them on the desk. Then he walks over to me and takes me in his arms. “I’m sorry.”

I can smell his aftershave, familiar to me now, and feel the heavy cotton of his shirt. “Ned-”

“You don’t need a hard time from me this morning, do you?” He hugs me tighter, rocking a little, and I feel myself relax into the comfort of his arms. My hands slip easily around the small of his back. He wears no undershirt, which I love, and his shirt is slightly damp from the walk to work.

“The notes are missing, Ned.”

He kisses my hair. “No, they’re not. I have them.”

I pull away from him. “You have the notes, Ned?You?”

“Not with me. I put them in my safe at home, behind the picture of that old Lightning, at Wellfleet.”

“Where did you get them?”

“The notes? I went to the office after the memorial service.”

“Why?”

“I had work to do, honey. I was going to work the weekend, but we spent it in bed, remember? I stopped by your office and found them on top of your desk with a note.”

“But why were you even on this floor? Your office is on-”

“I don’t know. I just was.”

“Why did you go in my office?”

“On impulse, I guess. I wanted to be around something of yours. Look at your handwriting, you know. It was goony.” He laughs nervously. “What’s with all the questions?”

Fear rises in my throat. He has no reason to be on my floor, no right to come into my office. I imagine him rooting through my desk in the glow of the clock. I hope Judy isn’t right about him, but I can’t take any more chances. I steel myself. “Ned, I can’t see you for a while.”

“What?” He looks shocked.

“I want you to bring the notes to the office as soon as you can. Maybe you should go home at lunch.”

“What are you saying? What about us?”

“I’m…not ready for us. Not yet. Not now.”

“Wait a minute, what’s happening?” His voice breaks. “Mary, I love you!”

He hadn’t said that, not once the whole weekend, though I wondered how deep his feelings went. Now I know, if he’s telling the truth.I love you. The words reach out and grab me by the heart. I want so much for it not to be him, but I’m afraid Judy’s right. And now I’m afraid of him. “I need time.”

“Time? Time for what?”

“To think. I want the notes back.”

He grabs my arms. “Mary, I love you. I’ll get you the notes. I was only trying to help. I didn’t think they should be left out like that, where anybody could pick them up.”

I can’t look at him. “Ned, please.”

He releases me suddenly. “I get it. You think it’s me, don’t you? You suspect me.” His tone is bitter.

“I don’t know what I think.”

“You think it’s me. You think I’m trying to kill you. I can’t believe this.” He throws up his hands in disgust. “We spent the weekend together, Mary. I told you things I never told anybody else in the world!”

He falls silent suddenly. I look at him, and his face is full of anger.

“That’s why, isn’t it?” he asks quietly. “Because of what I told you. I was depressed, so now you have me pegged for a psycho killer. Oh, this is beautiful. This is really beautiful. Tell me again how proud you are of me, Mary.”

“That’s not it. I just need time, Ned.”

“Fine. You just got it.” He stalks to the door but stops there, his back to me. “Whoever it is, they’ll still be after you. And I won’t be around to keep you safe.”

I feel sick inside. He hurts so much, and it hurts to see him go.

“Is this really what you want?” he asks, without turning around.

I close my eyes. “Yes.”

“So be it.” The next sound is the harshca-chunk of the door as it closes.

When I open my eyes, I’m alone. I cross my arms and try to keep it together, looking around my office at the books and the files and the diplomas. They’re so cold, fungible. They could belong to anybody, and they do. Every lawyer here has the same rust-colored accordion files, the same framed diplomas from the same handful of schools. My eyes fall on the roses, so out of place in this cold little office with the clock staring in.

10:36.

I feel like I have to regroup, to sort out everything that’s been happening. I need to think things out in a safe place, but I can’t remember the last time I felt safe. In Mike’s arms. Another time.

In church, as a child.

In church, what a thought. I haven’t been to church in ages and had lapsed way before that. But I always felt safe in church as a little girl. Protected, watched over. The idea grows on me as I stand, frozen, facing the clock.

I think of the church I grew up in, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I was a believer then. A believer in a God who watched over us all, the cyclists and the gay secretaries. A believer in the goodness of all men, even partners, and lovers too. A believer in our fraternity with animals, including cats who won’t rub against your leg no matter what.

I grab my blazer from behind the door and stop by Miss Pershing’s desk. “Miss Pershing, I’ll be out of the office for a couple of hours.”

“Oh?” She takes off her glasses and places them carefully on her shallow chest, where they dangle on a lorgnette. “Where shall I say you are, Miss DiNunzio?”

“You shouldn’t say, but the answer is, in church.”

For the first time, Miss Pershing smiles at me.

I hail a cab outside our building. The cabbie, an old man with greasy white hair, stabs out his cigarette and flips down the flag on the meter. “Where to?”

“Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Ninth and Wolf.”

“Lawyers go to church?” A final puff of smoke bursts from his mouth.

“Only when they have to.”

He chuckles thickly, and it ends in a coughing spasm. We take off in silence, except for the crackling of the radio. The cab swings onto Broad Street, which bisects the city at City Hall and runs straight to South Philly. Broad Street is congested, as usual. We stop in the cool shadow cast by a skyscraper and then lurch into the bright light of the sun. I crank open the window, watching us pass through light and dark, listening to the old cabbie swear at the traffic, and trying to remember the last time I was in church.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been 3,492,972 weeks since my last confession. The Jurassic Period. When I did everything the nuns told me to, so I wouldn’t get my knuckles rapped, and memorized the Baltimore Catechism. I made my First Holy Communion at age seven, during which the priest put a wafer onto my tongue that he said was the body of Jesus Christ. I didn’t swallow it until right before they took my picture, and my baby face is beatific in the photo. I’d swallowed my slice of Our Savior and was overjoyed that this cannibalistic act had not sent lightning zigzagging to my head.

“Shit!” The cabbie bangs on the steering wheel, foiled in his attempt to run a traffic light. Sunlight blazes into the old cab, illuminating its dusty interior and heating its duct-taped seat covers. “You think they’d time these goddamn lights, like on Chestnut Street. But no, that would make too much sense.”

I nod, half listening. As soon as the light changes, the cabbie guns the motor and we leap forward into the tall shadow cast by the Fidelity Building. Its darkness comes as a relief and seems to quiet even the irritable driver.

As a child, I used to look at my communion picture on top of our boxy television. I wanted to be as good as the little girl in my picture, she of the praying hands and the lacquered corkscrews. But I wasn’t her. I knew it inside. The church told me so. They taught me that Jesus Christ suffered on the cross and died because of me. All because of me. Blood dripped from his crown of thorns and flowed in rivulets from rough bolts hammered clear through his wrists and insteps. His agony was all my fault. I felt so sorry, as a little girl, and so ashamed. Of myself.

“Hey, asshole!” shouts the cabbie, hanging out the window. “Move that shitwagon! I’m tryin’ to make a living here!” The cab bucks violently in the shade. I grab for the yellowed hand strap just as we burst free of the snarled traffic into the light.

And in my religious life, what happened next was calamitous. I grew up. It was Luke who said that whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it, and I stopped being a child. I stopped accepting on faith and started to doubt. Then I started to question, which brought the heavens, in the form of school administration, crashing down upon my head. I took biological issue with the Resurrection and was suspended for three days.

Light and dark, light and dark.

That’s when it started, the split between me and the church. And me and my twin. For as I began to turn away from the light, Angie began to embrace it. I resented the church, for making me feel so terrible about myself as a child and for dividing Angie and me. In time, I stopped going to mass altogether, and my parents didn’t force the issue. The three of them went every Sunday, while I stayed home with the Eagles pregame show. They prayed for my soul. I prayed for the Eagles.

“Do you remember Roman Gabriel?” I say to the cabbie. We’re almost there.

He looks into the rearview mirror with rheumy eyes. “Sure. Quarterback for the Birds. We got him from the Rams.”

“Do you remember when?”

He squints, in thought. “’Seventy-three, I think. Yeah, in ’seventy-three.”

So long ago. I can’t do the math in my head.

“What a fruit he was,” says the cabbie. “We shoulda kept Liske.”

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I can’t remember a thing about my last confession.

And I can’t forget a thing about my abortion.