Blood Relations (22 page)

At the altar she knelt before the icon of the Blessed Virgin with the infant Jesus Christ and made the sign of the cross.

“Panagiamou, anapafse tin psihe tou agapimenou pe diou-” Mother of our Lord Jesus, bless the soul of my beloved son-”

Dina’s words trailed off. Who was listening? Only oil and canvas. Mother and child in two dimensions. And God, if he was here at all, was no more substantial than the painted image on the rotunda a hundred feet above her head. There was more help on earth. Yesterday, Friday, she had gone to Frank Tolin’s office for the second time. Sam didn’t know. She’d had no appointment, but Frank had seen her anyway. He had sat beside her on the sofa, and his secretary had brought them tea. Don’t blame yourself, he said. Matthew had been pulled into a swamp, that life on South Beach, the clubs, the drugs, the easy sex. Frank listened until his floor-to-ceiling windows went dark and he had to turn on the lights. Dina had nearly fallen to her knees in gratitude. He had performed a miracle, of sorts: since that day in his office she had not felt one twinge of pain.

Dina suddenly tensed. From behind her had come a whisper. An echo.

She silently mouthed his name: Matthew. But how could he follow her here, into this place? What did he want?

Beyond the altar the silent faces of the apostles and the Holy Family gazed back at her. Jesus lifted a hand, palm outward. St. George, in his armor, raised his sword. A white dove carved of marble perched on a corner of the pulpit, wings lifted as if in flight.

If she turned around, she might see Matthew in the shadows in the back of the cathedral, under the icons of the saints. Last night he had come into her father’s house while she slept upstairs in the small room that had been hers as a girl. One moment asleep, the next awake, trembling, hearing only the crickets in the backyard. The moon shone blue-white through the window and fell across the bed, holding her there as if moonlight had weight and substance. She saw the glass doorknob turn, turn. Then a face in fragments, abraded to the bone. Her screams had brought Aunt Betty, bathrobe flapping, running into her room.

Dina closed her eyes tightly. Of course he wasn’t real; she knew that. The laughter she heard at night wasn’t real. Or the door that closed on the other side of an empty room. Nor was Matthew’s face when it had appeared in her bathtub, his hair lifting and falling with the movement of the water. The worst had been yesterday, leaving Frank Tolin’s office. Alone in the elevator she had heard the hollow drip of liquid, then a gush. Looking down she saw a pool of blood, foaming and surging, sticky and red, sucking at her feet, swirling into’ vortices. When the door opened, the blood flowed into the crack. Gone. Not a drop of it on her shoes.

She whirled around, heart leaping. There had been a flutter, like birds’ wings, and now a shadow seemed to pass in and out among the white columns along the side of the cathedral.

Above the doors were the faces of the saints, dark, bearded men with heavy-lidded eyes and long, tapering fingers at their hearts.

As in a dream, she struggled to move her lips and whisper, Matthew. The light in the cathedral dimmed, then brightened-a cloud passing over the sun, nothing more.

Steadying herself on a pew, Dina got up and walked out of the sanctuary. The old woman again looked up from her reading and smiled. “Kalinichta, koritsimou.” Good night, my dear.

“Kalinichtasas, kyria.

Dina went down the broad steps to the street. A faint smell of brine and seaweed came from the sponge docks. Main Street was just ahead, curving down a low hill, with its tidy shops and oldbrick storefronts.

If only they had come to live here, instead. Sam could have opened an office in town, and Dina would have hers close by. Melanie would do better at the church school. And Matthew would not have been destroyed.

Last Monday in Frank’s office, Sam had sat impassively, hardly speaking. Then Frank had said the case should be investigated, and Sam had argued, until Dina had begged him to stop. Of course, Sam believed that nothing would come of it; let him think what he wanted. She had realized, in the cold light of perfect vision, that she was the stronger one. She could redeem their son; Sam could not. Such terrible knowled e, because now she knew how utterly alone she had become.

On her way back to her father’s house Dina walked a street too far and found herself at Spring Bayou, at the top of the stone steps that led down to the water. Palmetto palms grew on either side of the steps, and a sidewalk fronted around the bayou, which was shaded by pines and oaks.

Dina walked out onto the concrete platform. The graygreen water threw back reflections of the clouds. A cool breeze arose, winding its way from the Gulf. Her skirt pressed close to her thighs, then fluttered.

On Epiphany Day three Januaries ago, Matthew had been one of sixty or so young men who dove for the cross. After services in the cathedral ended, the people, thousands of them, marched to Spring Bayou.

The archbishop in his miter led the way, his gold-embroidered robes sewn with bells. Behind him came the bishops and the priests with censers; children in native costumes; marching bands; and then the crowd, the crush of people.

The boys went out into the bayou in small boats to form a semicircle around the platform where Dina now stood, which at the time was decorated with flowers. It was cold that day, and the boys shivered in swim trunks and white Tshirts. Lovely, innocent young men. Tensed and ready, they fixed their eyes on the archbishop. He said a prayer, then dipped the cross into the water, once, twice. The third time he flung it high, and at the same moment a girl behind him released a dove. It soared upward, white ribbons streaming from its feet, wings beating against the clear blue sky.

Before the cross touched the surface, there was a huge splash of young men diving for it. Dina could still see the flashing arc of Matthew’s bare legs and extended arms.

Other boys came up, took in air, and dove again. Watching them, holding her own breath, Dina clutched at Sam’s arm. Matthew could be drowning!

Then he burst to the surface, mouth open, gasping, water streaming over his face. In one upraised hand he held the cross. The people cheered. Dina jumped up and down like a girl, laughing, hugging Sam. Matthew scanned the C, crowd, smiling when he saw her, his hair dark and wet on his forehead.

The other boys carried him on their shoulders to the archbishop, who took the cross from him and blessed him. It meant Matthew would have a long and happy life.

rider a brightening sky, Sam Hagen picked up his pace.

Pushing himself a little, keeping a steady rhythm. He Uran the usual route, four miles in a long rectangle through the subdivision where he lived. Brookwood. No brooks, no woods. Only flat terrain with curbless streets and houses on a common theme, worth two or three hundred grand apiece. Blank windows and empty yards at this hour, the Sunday paper lying in driveways. There would be an article, with pictures, about Eddie Mora. Someone in Washington had leaked the story about his being Michigan senator Phil Kirkman’s choice as running mate.

Kirkman, needing some minority blood on the ticket. Edward Jos6 Mora. A little young, said the commentators, but the V.P. hopeful on both tickets this election year would be a sop to minorities.

Sam breathed the damp, heavy air in and out and concentrated on the ground ahead of him. He wore an elastic band on his left knee and five-pound wrist weights.

As a kid, when he’d run through his father’s orange grove or around the track for football practice, the rhythm had been enough, the joy of blood rushing through his veins and the earth blurring under his feet. There wasn’t much joy in this, the slow pounding on asphalt and concrete, but not doing it made him feel vaguely dissatisfied with himself.

He had awakened before dawn, not used to sleeping alone. Dina was in Tarpon Springs with her father.

She had called yesterday morning to say she’d made it safely, which was the drill whenever anybody went out of town. Sam had asked how Costas was. Fine. He’s fishing off the dock. Pick me up at the airport Sunday atfour-thirty. Then she’d hung up as he was in the middle of saying, Tell the old man to catch a few for me.

She was still incensed that Sam had given her a hard time about taking two thousand dollars out of their savings account. She hadn’t asked, just carried the cash to Frank Tolin on Friday as a cost deposit.

Then she ‘told Sam about it as she was packing a bag for the trip. He’d been irritated, said he was going to call Frank and get it back. And Dina had calmly looked around from her closet and said no. Would you rather I get more Prozac from Dr. Berman? Would that be easier?

He had to admit her mood had improved, if anger could be called an improvement on depression.

Last Monday afternoon, Frank Tolin had explained how difficult a wrongful death suit would be in a case like this.

The city, which had maintained the street, had immunity from prosecution. Uncle Andy’s, the bar that had served Matthew, was still in business, but did they have enough assets to pay a judgment or the insurance to cover it? And even if Matthew’s Harley, nearly new, had been defective in some way, had the defect contributed to the accident?

Dina had been undeterred; Frank promised to look into it. He never said he wanted a two-thousand-dollar cost deposit.

What irritated Sam most was that out of professional courtesy, if not good manners, Frank should have discussed money with the father of the decedent before he asked the mother for two thousand dollars. Sam had thought Frank was doing this as a favor. Hey, buddy, we go way back.

The brake on Sam’s temper was realizing it had been partly his own fault: He had made it clear this was Dina’s undertaking, not his. He had gone with her just the one time. He didn’t care to see that office again, where he had made no success of private practice. And he didn’t want to see Caitlin Dorn, if she happened to drop by. He had imagined Frank showing him and Dina out just as Caitlin came breezing in.

Rounding the corner past some pine trees, Sam ran directly at the sun. A few trees still lay in the underbrush, toppled by the hurricane; the lot was tangled and overgrown. Sam took a deep lungful of air and expelled it slowly, then again to ease the stitch in his side. He wondered if he was at the age where a man could drop in his tracks, sprawling on the pavement a half mile from home. There had been times when he would have welcomed it.

He stretched out his arms, feeling the pull of the wrist weights, and finally the bum in his muscles.

Since showing up in his office, Caitlin Dorn had reappeared in his thoughts. That Dale Finley knew about her made Sam churn with helpless fury. He felt vulnerable, caught in a lie no longer relevant. They hadn’t been careful, three years ago. Finley had found out; other people could, too.

If Caitlin testified, one of the other prosecutors would do the questioning, Sam had decided. If she ever got to the stand. She might swear in a deposition she had seen nothing. Sam had seen witnesses fade out. Indignation over a crime only lasted so long, when it had happened to someone else. Then a witness would start thinking about other choices. Caitlin could be offered an assignment for a major fashion magazine in Italy. If she didn’t look out for herself, who would? Loyalties were fleeting on South Beach.

Fleeting everywhere.

Open-handed, she had struck a glancing, ineffectual blow across Sam’s cheek, then tried to shove him off her.

He pressed her wrists into the mattress. “What in hell’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t want to hear it. How much you love me. Next you’ll tell me you’ve been thinking of a divorce.” She turned herface. “Don’t ruin it, okay?”

He laughed, astonished. “Don’t you trust anyone?

When Sam slowed in his own driveway, breathing through his mouth, hands on hips, the muscles in his legs were trembling. Sweat soaked his shorts and T-shirt. He picked up the Sunday paper, then went inside to shower and change.

Before going downstairs to make coffee he looked in on his daughter. The blinds were shut tightly, and in the near-dark he could make out Melanie’s shape, her hair tangled on the pillow, and the pink curve of her hand. A bear with half its fur gone lay upside down on the carpet.

Fourteen years old, and she still slept with her bear. Sam quietly closed the door.

Three years ago, neither of the kids had known how close he had come to running away, packing what would fit in his car, signing over the house to Dina, paying alimony, child support, it didn’t matter. He’d been alive again, leaping, breathless, the blood pounding through his body. If he couldn’t live honestly, openly, then what was the point?

He had come close, but couldn’t leap that far. Sam had always thought of himself as having some standards in this world. He wanted his children to know he wasn’t like the parents of some of their friends: those adults who permitted anything and demanded nothing; who drank and overdosed; who told their kids what a sad, rotten business life was; who overspent and whined and slept around with the abandon of teenagers.

Matthew had never known about his father’s infidelity, but he had heard the angry voices behind the bedroom door. He had seen his mother turn her back in icy silence.

Had seen Sam come home late from work, then change into his running shoes and be gone. Matthew had carried a grudge for unnamed sins.

Melanie, if she had known, would have been all right.

She had always been more forgiving, more placid and steady. The one who swept up the bits of shattered glass from the back porch after her brother had come home at dawn, stinking drunk, sixteen years old. Sam had seized him by the front of his jacket, and they had stumbled, both of them, into the sliding glass door while Dina sat on the kitchen floor and wept.

Last night Sam had awakened to noises from Matthew’s room. Grumpy and squinting, he had found Melanie there, going through photographs and papers that her mother had been organizing into folders for Frank Tolin.

Sam had ordered her to get back to bed.