Blues in the Night (17 page)

twenty-seven

“Sally can’t make it tonight,” Mindy told me as I followed her into her breakfast room. “Her husband had a last-minute business meeting, and she couldn’t get a sitter.”

Edie and my sister-in-law, Gitty, were seated at the table, stacking a double tier of tiles (called a “wall”) against their racks. I exchanged hellos, inquired about Gitty’s eight-month-old, and asked Mindy, nine months pregnant with her third child, how she was feeling.

“Put a fork in me, I’m done,” Mindy said.

“Let’s go,” Edie said, leaning over to set up my wall. “Talk later.”

Edie is thirty-four, the oldest sibling, and takes seriously the authority vested in her by her seniority. We have the same coloring—brown eyes, blond, highlighted hair (she wears hers straight and chin length)—but she’s inches shorter (five-one), and what she lacks in height, she makes up for in energy. We are polar opposites. I’m a last-minute kind of woman and tend to clutter, which I shamelessly blame on deadlines, imminent or forthcoming. Edie, who gives Israeli dance instruction three times a week and is president of her three children’s school PTA, is ruthlessly efficient and organized. Magazines are alphabetized and discarded, read or unread, after a month (neatly excised articles are immediately filed). Unlike my fridge, where foods often turn interesting colors, hers harbors no produce with wilted leaves or dimpled skins, and her freezer has enough prepared food to feed the family through seven years of biblical famine. She’s the only person I know who has never lost a sock, and her home is so spotless that her cardiac surgeon husband, Victor, could probably perform a triple bypass on her kitchen floor, whose five-year-old grout is bleached every week to its original whiteness.

Mindy, who has my mom’s dark hair and grace under pressure, is thirty-one and has two daughters with Norman, a nursing home administrator. She’s a tax attorney, not as organized as Edie, but unflappable and wise in ways that have nothing to do with her having graduated summa cum laude. I’m close to all my sisters, but Mindy’s the one on whose shoulder I cried when my marriage was falling apart. I didn’t want to worry my mom, and I sensed that Edie was impatient for me to sweep Ron out of my life. Like her china, shattered by the Northridge earthquake and quickly replaced, he was beyond repair.

Gitty is twenty-three. She’s been married two years to my brother Judah, who owns a Judaica store, so she’s relatively new to the family, and I’m sure she’s received pointers from Victor and Norman. She’s sweet but not cloying, a nutritionist who doesn’t criticize the crap we eat at our weekly games.

Bubbie G calls Edie
a bren
(a dynamo) and Mindy, five-eight,
a hoicheh
(tall) and
a kliegeh
(clever). Liora is
a neshomeleh
, a sweetheart. Judah is
a lamden
, an erudite person, Noah is
a brillyant
, a diamond, and Joey,
a mazik,
a rascal, a name that has stuck though he hasn’t done anything rascally in years. I’m
a kochleffl
, a busybody, as if you didn’t know, but am also
a lebedikeh
, a lively one. Ron is
a choleryeh
(accent on the second syllable), which is the Yiddish for “cholera.” Aside from Ron, Bubbie hasn’t given epithets to her grandchildren’s spouses, so I suppose he should feel special.

I took my seat and built my wall. We play the American version of mah jongg, not the Chinese. It has elements of rummy-Q and gin but is more complicated and challenging. You play with fourteen tiles, which are dealt from the walls. Tiles come in three suits (red Craks, green Bams, and blue Dots), numbered one through nine. There are also eight Jokers, eight Flower tiles, sixteen Winds (four East, four North, four South, and four West), and twelve Dragons (red, green, and blue ones called Soaps).

You play the game by picking and discarding tiles, and passing a tile when a player calls it. Your goal is to assemble sets of tiles (singles or in groups of two, three, four, or five) into one of the hands created annually by the national league in New York, at which point you proclaim, “Mah jongg!” and collect winnings from the other players. Quarters to fifty cents from each player if you’re playing face-card value, but the game is about fun, not money. It sounds impossibly difficult on paper, I know, and it takes a while to become familiar with the tiles and the sets and the rules. There are instruction booklets, and I could give you details, but it’s like having sex. The only way to learn is to do it.

I love mah jongg. The feel of the cool, ivory tiles; the click they make when you’re building them into a wall or arranging them on your rack. I love the idea that I’m doing something exotic, the smell and taste of the popcorn, the laughter and the gentle gossip and the release from the week’s stress. I learned the game when I was eleven from my mom, who’s been playing for over thirty years with the same core group of women. My sisters and I started our own game five years ago and Edie’s friend Sally joined us a little later. Since her return from Israel, Liora has been playing sporadically, when dates and homework allow, but Gitty has become addicted like the rest of us. I rarely skip a game, only when I’m on a deadline.

I finished building my wall, and the game began. Gitty dealt tiles from her wall. There’s an initial exchange of tiles, and we were all quiet, selecting possible hands. Then Gitty discarded a tile and named it, and the game took on its rhythm, each player picking a tile, discarding a tile, naming it. Five Crak, three Dot, Flower. . . . There were snippets of conversation—bulletins, really—about community news, movies we’d seen, family stuff. Talking is okay as long as it doesn’t slow the game or disturb concentration.

“How was Liora’s date?” Edie asked fifteen minutes later. We’d finished the first game, which she’d won, and were starting the second, exchanging tiles. “Does anybody know?”

“She’ll go out again,” Gitty said, “but she doesn’t feel any chemistry.” Gitty’s only four years older than Liora, and the two have much in common.

“At least she’s giving him a second chance.” Edie discarded a tile. “Molly won’t do that much for Zachary Abrams.”

“We’re going out tomorrow night.”

“You didn’t tell me.” Edie looked up from her tiles.

“So how is he?” Mindy smiled.

“He’s nice.” I felt myself blushing.

“I thought you weren’t going out with him again,” Edie said.

“I changed my mind. When’s your next appointment, Mindy?” See how smoothly I segue?

“Thursday. I’m hoping I won’t be late this time, although I’m not rushing to go to the hospital. A woman was killed there last week.”

“Imagine not being safe in a hospital.” Gitty shuddered.

“They’re not sure it’s murder,” Edie said. “It may be suicide. She was pregnant.”

“Why would she kill herself?” Gitty asked.

“According to the
Times
article, she had postpartum psychosis after her last child.” Edie passed me three tiles. “She killed him. He was two months old.”

“Oh, my God!” Gitty exclaimed. “How awful!”

“I guess she got what she deserved,” Edie said.

“How can you say that?” Mindy demanded. “She was ill. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

Edie snorted. “Most women have postpartum depression. I did. You did. You get over it.”

“We had the baby blues, not depression, certainly not psychosis. We were lucky, Edie. I have a friend who had postpartum depression. It took her a year to get over it, and that was with therapy and medication.”

“Who?” Edie asked.

“What’s the difference?” Mindy said, annoyed. Like Liora, she’s careful about not gossiping. “She was miserable. She never slept, and she had these fears that she was going to put the baby in the microwave, which made her feel horribly guilty. That’s when she knew she needed help.”

I winced at the image.

“Exactly,” Edie said. “You get help. You don’t kill your child. That’s just another excuse the lawyers are using.”

“She was depressed, not psychotic. And what if you don’t know you
need
help?” Mindy demanded. “It’s easy for you to say—you’ve never been there.”

“Well, you certainly don’t get pregnant again if you can’t handle being a mother.” Edie, as you may have guessed, would easily pull the lever on Andrea Yates.

“Actually, I talked to Lenore Saunders’s ex-husband,” I said. “He says Lenore
was
ill, that she really didn’t mean to kill their child.”

That stopped the game. I told them the whole story, from the time I’d read about Lenore in the police report through my afternoon talk with Connors.

“So what do the police think?” Gitty asked.

“They think she committed suicide, but I’m not sure. I also don’t know what to make of Lenore. Her best friend thinks she walks on water. Jillian says she’s a scheming, manipulative witch.”

“Well, of
course
Jillian hates her.” Edie made a face. “She was about to be dumped a second time. She sounds like a snob.”

“She reminds me of Karen Beymer,” Mindy said. “She was in charge of seating for the school banquet this year and offered to put me at a great table. I said, please put me with Sally and Helene, and she said,
well,
if you want to sit with your
pauper
friends.” She wrinkled her nose.

We all groaned, then resumed play.

“What about the ex–mother-in-law?” Edie asked, discarding a tile. “Six Crak. She might not have wanted Lenore back in the family.”

I remembered the look of intense hatred I’d seen on Maureen Saunders’s face. “She’s on my shortlist. I want to talk to Lenore’s mom about her, and about Lenore, but we’ve been playing phone tag the past few days.” I’d dialed her number several times before coming to Mindy’s, but her line had been busy. She was probably making funeral arrangements. “I want to stop by her house on my way home.”

“Five Dot.” Mindy tossed a tile onto the table. “That late?”

“I want the five Dot.” Edie placed the tile on the ledge of her rack and added two five Dots from her hand, then discarded a tile. “Eight Crak.”

“Actually, I was thinking of leaving at a quarter to ten,” I said, discarding a Flower. “She lives five minutes from here.” Nina had given me the address, on Stearns between Olympic and Pico.

“And ruin the game?” Edie frowned.

“Sorry.” We usually play until eleven. “I thought Sally would be here. I’m really anxious to talk to Lenore’s mom about Saunders.”

“Is he the Saunders who wants to build a large complex in the Santa Monica Mountains?” Mindy asked.

I nodded. “Why?”

“One of my clients invested with him, but was thinking of pulling out. He heard that Saunders is having trouble with the EPA.”

“The environmental guys? I thought it was the zoning commission.”

“Can we talk later, please?” Edie said.

“Maybe it’s both,” Mindy said. “Saunders told him not to worry. Apparently, he has a magic touch.”

“Or he knows what palms to grease.” I thought about what Nina had said. “Would your client be willing to talk to me?”

“I’ll ask him.”

Gitty picked a tile. “Mah jongg.”

“I was one away,” Edie groused.

The lights in Betty Rowan’s house were on, a blue Honda Civic was in the driveway, but she didn’t answer the door.

Her line had been busy when I’d phoned before leaving Mindy’s. I tried her number again now on my cell phone. Still busy. A little late to be making funeral calls.

Twenty-four hours had passed since she’d phoned, anxious to talk to me. Maybe I’d read anxiety into her voice. Maybe her phone was out of order, or off the hook. Maybe she’d changed her mind about talking to me, or someone had changed it for her.

It was ten after ten. I walked to the house of the neighbor on the right and rang the bell. A minute later the privacy window opened, and a man asked me what I wanted.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. “I’ve been trying to reach Mrs. Rowan since last night, and her line’s been busy. I’m wondering if you’ve seen her today.”

“Let me ask my wife.”

I waited another minute for the wife, who told me through the privacy window that she hadn’t seen Betty since yesterday afternoon.

“She lost her daughter,” the woman said. “I expect she’s feeling poorly. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

A feeling of unease was creeping up my spine. “Do you by any chance have a key to her house?”

“I don’t. You can try the neighbor on the other side, Zena Lopost. She and Betty are friendly. I hope she’s okay,” the woman added before shutting the little window.

I hoped so, too. The unease was spreading like an oil slick.

Zena Lopost had a key. “We thought it’d be a good idea, swapping keys, in case one of us got locked out or something. Why, is something wrong?”

From her voice I guessed she was somewhere around Betty Rowan’s age. “I don’t know.” I repeated what I’d told the other neighbor. “Mrs. Rowan left several messages saying she needed to talk to me about her daughter, Lenore. So I’m worried.”

Zena opened her door. She was older than her voice, probably in her mid-fifties. She was wearing a short zip-up, yellow cotton robe with white daisies and Dr. Scholl sandals. Her faded graying brown hair was in a braid that hung down her back, and her plain face was scrubbed free of makeup, if in fact she’d worn any. She told me she’d been in bed when I’d rung the bell.

“She was jittery yesterday,” Zena said. “More than Friday. I was watching the TV with her when they said on the news that maybe Lenore was killed. She looked white as a sheet and started shaking. I don’t know what’s worse, knowing that your child killed herself, or that someone did it to her.”

I had no answer for that.

“You’re thinking that . . .” Zena didn’t finish the sentence. “Let me get the key.”

She was a tall, sturdy woman, and I was glad to have her at my side. We tramped over to Betty Rowan’s house, two figures silhouetted by the moonlight. We hadn’t exchanged a word since she’d stepped out of her house, and I imagine we looked the same, eyes staring grimly straight ahead, lips clamped together, hearts beating a little too fast.