Getting Old Is to Die for (28 page)

Barbara turns down one deserted dirt road with no street signs after another, churning up dust clouds billowing behind her. Jack's car is covered with it. He can hardly see out of his windshield.

Finally she comes to a stop.

"She was right; we'd never have found this place," Jack comments.

I feel myself tensing up.

We arrive at a run-down farmhouse, small, dingy, dreary, overpowered by woods so dense one would hardly know it was daytime.

Jack and I get out of the car. Barbara backs up until she's parallel to where we stand. She lowers her window; her voice is tight. I can see tears forming in her eyes. "Welcome to the family mansion. I hope you get what you came for." With that she reverses the car and races back down the road, spewing clouds of dust.

For a moment we stare at the house. Jack comments, "Guess it must have been built about a century ago." It's a wreck of a building. Rotted boards. Paint long gone. Torn window shades drawn on every window. Kids would call it a haunted house. And perhaps it is. This is a house of desolation. I don't want to go inside. There can be nothing but pain in there. Anyone who would live inside is not living but merely existing.

Jack and I look at one another. "We can leave now," he says, as if reading my thoughts.

"You know we can't. It's taken this long to arrive at the end of this godforsaken road. There's no turning back."

Jack takes my hand in his. "Whatever is in there...we have each other...."

No one answers when he knocks. We wait. The door is open. We enter into dimness. Although it's afternoon, it seems like twilight in here. The smells of age and rot assail us. I need to breathe shallowly.

And there she is, walking toward us in the unlit hallway. More like an apparition than someone real. The ghostlike figure turns, and we follow her.

I have the silliest thought that I'm in a Stephen King novel, and in a moment the hall closet might open and reveal a monster made of coat hangers.

Patty Dennison leads us to her old-fashioned, almost primitive kitchen, where there is some light filtering in through the trees into one small window. Now we can see her. She's sixty-three, by my computation. She looks like an eighty-year-old cadaver in a thin shapeless housedress. She wears no shoes. I think of the life I've led, alive and vibrant and living it to my fullest. This is a walking dead woman. Barbara knew it and had wanted to prevent me from seeing what that once eager college girl had become.

Jack tightens his grip on my hand.

Patty wordlessly pours us tea from a kettle that hangs from a slab of iron over a wood-burning fireplace. I don't want to be rude and refuse, but I hate to think about what germs are in that cup. I glance around and I realize I needn't worry. The kitchen, though decrepit, is absolutely spotless and scrubbed. I guess she washes everything with boiling water from the fireplace kettle.

She looks directly into my eyes. "I'm tired of running." The voice sounds dusty from lack of use. She points to an old rickety kitchen chair. I sit gingerly. Jack perches behind me. Patty sits opposite, on the only other chair in the room, sipping her already poured tea.

"Hello, Patty," I say softly. "This is my friend, Jack Langford."

She ignores Jack. It's as if her eyes have fastened themselves only on me. "I know who you are and why you're here." She sips again. "I've thought of you often. Are you well?"

"Yes, thank you, I'm fine."

"Life has been good to you?"

"Yes," I say softly. She's like a fragile glass that might shatter at any moment.

"I'm relieved to hear it. I know you suffered because of me. I'm sorry."

Jack's hands tighten on my shoulders, trying to signal his compassion. I know he is there for me.

I feel I need to reassure her even though I choke on my words. "It wasn't your fault. My husband wouldn't regret that he gave his life to save yours."

"Stop!" Her skinny hand jerks and the tea mug turns over, spilling liquid down onto her clothes and the floor. She pays no attention. She jumps up. "He died for nothing! The bastard who shot him was my boyfriend! Eddie Fitch. I was desperate to be rid of him. I had just told him I never wanted to see him again when he smacked me and knocked me down. I screamed. He warned me if I left him, he'd kill me. And he had the gun to prove it. When Professor Gold came to my rescue, Eddie showed he was serious by shooting him."

So Milt Paxton was right, Jack thinks. All along the girl had known Jack Gold's killer. It was a domestic disturbance, the kind of volatile situation that all cops fear walking into. And Jack Gold was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My poor Gladdy, to have to find this out.

I gasp. I never expected this. Never. Dear God, help me to deal with this.

"I believed his threats after that," Patty continues. "Eddie said he'd kill my whole family if I ever talked. So I stopped talking altogether."

Jack says softly, "And you ran away."

She pulls her eyes away from me and looks at Jack now. "Yes, to this town where my family came from. Eddie followed me. We never married, but we lived together." She takes a worn rag from the sink, stoops and mops up the spilled tea, and then sits wearily down again. "If you can call that living."

Jack waits. "I'm so sorry."

"He beat me. I worked at the factory to support us. He did nothing but drink and wait for me to come home so he could hit me some more. He terrorized my family. He destroyed all of us. All because I made a stupid error as a kid and picked the wrong guy."

She nervously scrapes her hands back and forth across the bare wooden table. Now, she can no longer look at me, nor I, her.

"Why didn't you call the police?" Jack asks.

"They couldn't help us! I ruined all our lives. My whole family faded away because of him."

She stops, head bowed, lost in her troubled thoughts.

"What happened to him? Where is he now?" Jack asks.

She lifts her head up tiredly. "Finally he got bored with just staying home. He found some gang to hang out with. They robbed a liquor store. I made a phone call and turned him in. He went to prison and within a month, somebody knifed him. He died. I was free at last."

She paused, staring into nothingness. "That was fifteen years ago. It didn't matter. It was too late. I died a long time before that."

We hear a noise. Someone comes into the kitchen. A man of about forty, in old misshapen clothes, shuffles in. There is something wrong with him. He mumbles and is barely able to walk.

Patty gets up and helps him into her chair at the table. She put a bib around his neck and takes out a plate of some kind of soft food from the refrigerator. She stands next to him and patiently feeds him as he listlessly allows her.

"More," he mumbles.

"Our child," she says bitterly. She leans over and gently kisses the blank face. "We share this hell together."

She doesn't look at me or Jack again. I get up.

"I have to leave," I say.

Patty doesn't respond. I can hear her softly humming a nursery song to her son as she forces the food into his flaccid mouth.

Jack and I walk outside and breathe deeply. I watch a tear run down his face. He embraces me. So tightly. I am stiff in his arms.

"I'm so sorry," he says.

I am too numb to cry.

45

PAXTON REVISITED

J
ack manages to find his way out of the woods and through the dust-laden, weed-filled dirt roads. He stops the car before turning back onto the highway. We sit there silently. He wants to comfort me, but my rigid body holds him back.

"I don't know what to say."

I shake my head as if to tell him there are no words that will help.

We remain unmoving. I stare out at the desolation around me that fits the way I feel. Not a bird sings. Not a car drives by. It's as if Patty Dennison had moved to the end of the earth to punish herself.

"Are you angry? You should be."

How can I be angry after seeing that pathetic woman?
I think ironically to myself. If only she hadn't screamed. If only Jack had come home five minutes earlier. If...if...woulda, coulda, shoulda, as my mother used to say.

"Is there someplace you want to go, Gladdy, dear?"

Again I shake my head.

"Back to Emily's? Get some sleep?"

No. Another head shake.

"Do you want me to drive you to Connecticut to be with Evvie?"

No.

He gives me a wry grin. "There's always 'Pago Pago' at the Dartford. I can order up some mai tais."

I manage a tiny smile. But, no.

I finally speak. I turn to him and look directly at his concerned face. "I feel like I've been on a roller coaster ever since I got here. Seeing you in New York so unexpectedly. Then to find out why you were here. I thought it was all over between us, and now we're on again. Going out to breakfast with you, with all the rekindling of love. And, yes, our precious few minutes in 'Pago Pago.' Then my old neighborhood and this final revelation about my husband's death. My mind is on overload."

"How can you not be?" Jack says. "But I don't know where to take you from here. Where will you feel better? Or find comfort?"

"I have to absorb everything. Now that I have all the pieces."

"Maybe..." Jack starts to say, but stops.

"What?"

"No, you've been through enough. Forget about it."

"Jack, tell me."

"There's another piece. There's another victim in this terrible tragedy. A reporter named Milt Paxton, who was there at the scene when your husband died. I promised him I would tell him the outcome of the visit with Patty."

I think for a few moments. "Take me to him."

"Today? Haven't you had enough? Maybe tomorrow or sometime next week when you've rested?"

"Now, Jack. You mentioned it because somehow you think it will help."

"I could be wrong--maybe it will add more misery to what you already feel. No, I've changed my mind."

"His name jogs my memory. He was there, at the scene, the one who took those photos. He said something to me, but I wasn't able to listen. Maybe he'll remember what he said."

"Gladdy, no..."

"There's no place else I want to go. We might as well."

Jack pulls up in front of Milt Paxton's house in Long Island. The sun is about to make its descent and the air will cool. On the way, Jack fills me in a little about this feisty reporter, Milt Paxton, who lost the use of his legs covering this story.

"That's him. He's still sitting out there on his porch, as if he hasn't moved since the last time I was here. He doesn't look well. His face looks grayer."

"But he seems excited," I say. "I guess when you phoned and told him I was with you he perked up. He sees us."

From his wheelchair, Milt Paxton waves frantically, as if he can't wait another minute until we arrive. We get out of the car and climb the wobbly steps.

"So? So? Tell me?"

"Can't we at least get up on the porch?" Jack leans over and gives him a bear hug.

"Sure, sure, anything." His eyes go to me and he examines me as if with a microscope. "Gladys Gold, it's really you?"

I smile. "Yes, it's me."

His face lights up. "You're a fine-looking woman."

"Thank you."

"So, what do you see in that old guy?" He winks at me and points to the rocker next to him. "Sit. Sit. Here's some lemonade. Don't ask for anything else. My niece took the day off. She thinks she's entitled to it." He grins. "She's a good girl, but I don't ever tell her that."

"How are you feeling?" Jack says.

Milt rattles the newspaper on his lap. "Who gives a rat's ass about that? I'm still breathing. But not much longer. I'll have a heart attack right now if you don't start talking."

"Listen, Milt..."

He slaps at Jack with the paper. "Don't
you
listen? I have been counting the minutes 'til you got here."

Jack teases him gently. "What if I told you there was nothing to tell? That the trip was a waste of our time."