Degree of Guilt (25 page)

Moore looked at him. ‘If there’s any dirt on Ransom, Chris, I’ll find it.’

At seven-fifty, Paget found Terri in her office, looking drawn in the fluorescent light.

‘Why aren’t you home?’ he asked.

Terri brushed back her hair. ‘By the time I got in from Los Angeles, Richie had taken Elena out to dinner.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Father-daughter night, he called it. So I decided to take a little more time to process things.’

There was a hesitancy in her voice; except to see Elena, Paget guessed, some part of her was not eager to go home. ‘In the past six days,’ Paget said, ‘you’ve interviewed Melissa Rappaport, Jeanne Steinhardt, and Lindsay Caldwell. Processing
that
should take some time.’

Terri watched him. ‘I suppose, for me, it will.’

‘For you?’ Paget smiled. ‘As opposed to whom – the truly insensitive in general, or Johnny and me in particular? Or have your glaring personal inadequacies prevented you from noting that you’ve gotten three strangers to tell you things they’ve never told anyone else and perhaps never would have.’

‘That’s part of what bothers me.’ Terri’s shoulders drew in. ‘Knowing this stuff – it makes me feel responsible for them.’

‘You made them promises, Terri. I promise you I’ll keep them.’ Paget watched her face. ‘Somewhere along the line, I’ve started trying to notice the damage I’ll do before I do it. I do have a couple of questions, though.’

Some of the strain seemed to vanish from Terri’s face. ‘Sure.’

‘Are you hungry? Because I am. And have you ever eaten at Piano Zinc?’

Terri looked surprised. ‘What about Carlo?’

‘He had a game. So I fed him on the way back, to save homework time, and then watched him shuffle up the stairs toward his English paper like a prisoner on death row. Which is close to how I’m feeling about being here now.’

Terri smiled. ‘Then the answers are “yes,” “no,” and “I’d like to.”’

Le Piano Zinc was a crowded art deco café with mirrors on two sides, light-pink walls, framed Parisian posters. The slender, mustached maître d’ and Paget spoke briefly and amiably in French, and then Paget introduced Terri in English. The maître d’ smiled, shook her hand, and led them to a table in a quiet corner. The minute or two spent doing this reminded Terri of how little she knew about Paget’s life.

‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ she said.

‘College French, and poor at that. I practice on Robert, who indulges me. It’s the last vestige of my first ambition.’

‘Which was?’

‘To live in Paris and be Hemingway. Problem was, there’d already
been
a Hemingway.’

‘Why didn’t you try someone else?’

Paget smiled. ‘That was the ultimate problem – I couldn’t “find my own voice,” as it were. When I didn’t sound like Hemingway without the machismo, I sounded like Faulkner without the genius. And too few people read the Faulkner who
was
a genius.’

Terri appraised him. ‘You know, sometimes I can’t tell when you’re serious.’

‘Believe me, it’s completely intentional.’ Paget smiled again. ‘Some of the things I’m serious about embarrass me.’

Somewhere in the flippant remark, Terri thought, was an element of truth. ‘You’re serious about Carlo,’ she said.

Paget nodded. ‘About Carlo I’m absolutely serious.’ He paused, then added lightly, ‘Poor kid.’

The throwaway line hung there for a moment. What was it about Christopher Paget, Terri wondered, that so often made her feel as though they were having a two-track conversation: the first level what Paget said, the second and much more obscure level what Paget might communicate if she ever got close enough.

‘How has it been,’ she asked, ‘raising him alone?’

Paget’s eyes narrowed; Terri could not tell whether this was in contemplation of the question itself, or of why she had asked it.

‘In a way,’ he said finally, ‘that’s like asking what it’s like to be me: it’s all I know, so I’ve got no perspective on it. I suppose raising Carlo makes me acutely aware of all my deficiencies; I’m sure that makes me much more anxious than I’d be if I were married, and much more a burden to Carlo.’ He paused. ‘Although, in my own childhood, I learned that a rotten marriage is also rotten for the kid, and in ways more subtle and insidious than Carlo’s teenage resentments of me.’

‘Is that why you never married?’

Paget looked surprised and then laughed. ‘I
was
married. Just not to Mary Carelli.’

‘To whom?’

The waitress, Terri realized, was hovering near their table. Paget turned to her with a wry expression, as if in search of rescue.

‘Will you be having wine this evening?’ she asked.

Paget turned to Terri, ‘
I
will,’ he said, ‘if you insist on having this particular conversation.’

Terri hesitated and then saw that, in some small way, Paget’s remark was to signal his acceptance of her as something more than just a lawyer. ‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Do you care what we’re eating in terms of red or white?’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Richie and I drink from jugs, not bottles, and according to what’s already open.’

Paget turned to the waitress, said, ‘The Meursault, please,’ and then faced Terri again.

‘As I remember,’ she said, ‘I’d just asked who you were married to.’

‘Oh, that. Her name was Andrea Lo Bianco.’

Terri cocked her head. ‘Why does she sound so familiar?’

‘She was a principal dancer for the San Francisco Ballet.’ Paget smiled briefly. ‘After we divorced, she joined the ballet in Paris, funnily enough.’

‘Was it funny?’

‘Not terribly. But divorce rarely is.’

Terri hesitated. ‘Was that before Carlo came?’

Paget shook his head. ‘A year or so after. The two events were not unrelated.’

The last remark, delivered matter-of-factly, had an undertone of regret. ‘She didn’t want him?’ Terri asked.

Paget gazed at the tables around them, almost idly. ‘It was far less personal than that, and more complex. Andrea had never wanted children, because of her career and temperament, and I didn’t really care – I’d never thought that much of myself as a putative father. Her dancing was demanding, and when she was home, Andrea could pretty much count on having my attention.’ Paget paused. ‘She knew about Carlo, of course, but when he actually came to live with us, our marriage changed quite a lot. In fairness to her, Carlo required a good bit of attention then, although that was hardly his fault, either. And for my own part, I felt I had no choice at all.’

Buried somewhere in the last two sentences, Terri thought, was a piece of the puzzle that was Paget’s relationship to Mary Carelli. ‘Why was that?’ she asked.

Paget looked off into the distance. ‘He had some emotional problems,’ he finally answered. ‘Today’s shorthand, I suppose, would be that Carlo lacked self-esteem.’

The remark carried a painful trace of understatement. In the time it took the waitress to pour their first glass of wine, Terri decided to bury two questions she badly wanted to ask: ‘What problems?’ and ‘How did Carlo come to live with you?’ – the second of which, she was somehow sure, would drive Paget back within himself.

Smiling, Paget raised his glass to her. ‘To a marvelous career,’ he said, ‘for a lawyer who’s already better than most.’

Terri felt pleased and embarrassed, all at once. ‘Hardly. But thanks.’

Paget gave her a droll look. ‘Someday, Terri, you’ll learn to accept a compliment. Perhaps your friend Johnny and I should take turns forcing them on you, until you acquire the knack. It’ll be a lot easier for us than for you.’

‘I don’t mean to be like that. It’s just that when people say nice things about me, I feel as though I’ve fooled them.’

Paget smiled in acknowledgment. ‘The impostor syndrome. I know it well. Inside every self-assured professional lives a frightened neurotic who prays that he can somehow succeed before his clients discover the fraud. It’s the guilty secret that drives us all.’

‘You too?’

‘Me too.’ Paget grinned. ‘Even though, viewed from the outside, I’m clearly an incredible talent.’

‘Not to mention,’ Terri added, ‘Marnie Sharpe’s forbidden fantasy.’

Somehow the image piqued Paget’s sense of the absurd. He started laughing and couldn’t stop. ‘God,’ he said, ‘the mental pictures . . . ,’ and began laughing again. There was a sudden carelessness about his smile that made Terri want to keep it there: for a moment, she could imagine the young man he had been, before time and circumstance had changed him. And in that same moment, she realized how attractive he still was. The perfect match, she thought foolishly, for a prima ballerina.

‘Mary, Andrea . . . ,’ she said, smiling. ‘Do you ever fall in love with Wasps?’

‘Never; it’s the tragic flaw that keeps me apart from Marnie. Ever since I was young, I’ve had the deep-seated fear that I’d grow up to marry an eastern type named Muffy, and then she’d give birth to twin loaves of Wonder bread.’

Terri shook her head. ‘You can relax,’ she said. ‘Carlo is not your white-bread kind of kid. More like an Italian film star.’

‘Takes after his mother,’ Paget said lightly. ‘Goes to show what careful planning can do.’

Again, Terri sensed something unspoken. It changed her mood ever so slightly; perhaps he had made her think of Elena. She finished her first glass of wine. ‘What I can’t understand,’ she said finally, ‘is why you didn’t think you’d be a good father.’

Paget poured them both more wine. ‘For the same reason that I didn’t think that
I’d
had a particularly great childhood. Too often, people do with their children what their parents did with them.
My
parents had parents too – who was I to think I was any better?’

‘You are, though.’

Paget shrugged. ‘Sometimes people can rise above themselves. If the need’s extreme enough.’

‘And Carlo’s was?’

‘Yes.’ Paget hesitated. ‘Carlo’s was.’

The reluctance had crept back in his voice. Terri realized that, for whatever reason, Paget had been more candid with her than was his custom; perhaps it was safe to give something in return.

‘
My
parents fought,’ she said. ‘Or, more accurately, my father fought, and my mother tried to protect us.’

‘From what, exactly?’

‘He drank. And when he drank, he got violent.’ Terri looked up at him. ‘It’s something I’ve never really talked about.’

Paget considered her. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Terri hesitated. ‘When you’re young, you realize the family doesn’t want people outside to know. It gets to be a habit.’ She touched her chest. ‘Intellectually, you understand all that. But it’s what you feel here . . .’

Paget sipped his wine. ‘Your mother never left him?’

‘No. She’s Catholic and believes in the rules, no matter what.’ Terri stared at the table. ‘And there were five of us. I was the oldest – there are two still at home, and Mom’s still watching out for them.’

‘How did she do that? Protect you, I mean.’

‘I don’t know.’ Terri exhaled, began again. ‘I guess part was that she was so watchful, pretty much all the time. When my father drank, he heard insults where there weren’t any. You never knew when it would hit. When I was little, I remember closing my eyes, covering my ears.’ Terri folded her hands. ‘Sometimes my mom had to stand up for us. But mostly she kept us out of the way, tried to calm things, kept up with our classes and activities. My father saw it as some sort of conspiracy, almost. But it was just my mom taking care of things the way she had to do.’

Paget gave her a reflective look. ‘What did you learn from all that?’

‘That there’s nothing I can do for her.’

‘What I meant was: for yourself.’

Terri touched her wineglass, tracing the circle at its rim. ‘To avoid fights,’ she finally answered. ‘And to take care of things myself.’

‘It stands to reason.’ Paget’s tone changed, as if to signal a change of subject. ‘Tell me about Elena.’

Terri felt a knot in her stomach she had not known was there. ‘Do you mean: what has Elena learned from me?’

Paget shook his head. ‘That’s your question, Terri. It wasn’t mine. I’ve got no right to strip-mine your personal life.’

She looked up at him, surprised. His gaze was even, almost gentle. The tears in her own eyes startled her. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

Christopher Paget, Terri realized, had reached across and briefly touched her arm.

‘For what?’ he said. ‘You’re my friend, okay? I’ve decided that arbitrarily, because Carlo likes you. It’s an awesome responsibility, but since there are two of us, we can probably handle it.’

All at once, Terri felt relief course through her, warm and sudden. Lightly, Paget resumed the conversation. ‘Sometimes, as Freud once said, a cigar is only a cigar, I really did want to know about Elena.’

Terri smiled. ‘Oh, Elena’s wonderful. She’s very imaginative, poetic almost, and she has this incredible fantasy life. She’s much more like Richie that way – I’m so literal, and about as poetic as a pair of Birkenstocks.’ Talking about Elena, Terri realized, made her feel more like herself. ‘This is probably a mother speaking, but I’m sure that Elena will be someone out of the ordinary – a sculptress or a terrorist or something.’

‘Maybe she’ll content herself with vandalism.’ Paget thought for a moment. ‘What are you going to do about her schooling?’

Terri frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I’d like to pick somewhere permanent to live, with good schools. But we really can’t afford a house.’

Paget looked surprised. ‘I can’t swear to it, but the last time I looked, we paid our associates a living wage. In fact, although you were gracious enough not to say it, I had the distinct impression you left the P.D.’s office less for my charisma than to double your salary.’

Terri smiled. ‘It
was
the money. And I’m not complaining. It’s just that Richie works at home right now.’