Little Bird of Heaven (43 page)

Aaron had come to tell me surprising news: there was someone in Sparta with new information about what had happened to Zoe, and she wanted to tell Aaron and me, at the same time.

“‘New information’—? What is it?”

“She won’t say—she wants us to visit her, together.”

It had to be Jacky DeLucca, I thought. That woman who’d befriended me in the brownstone on West Ferry Street, who’d kissed the top of my head with a strange heated ardor, and sent me away. Aaron had no way
of knowing that I knew Zoe’s roommate. He said that the woman who wanted to see us had been “a close friend, like a sister” to Zoe at the time of her death, who was dying now of cancer and wanted to reveal something to us before it was too late.

“That’s what she calls it—‘reveal.’ To the two of us, together.”

In his flat blunt voice Aaron managed to disguise any excitement he might have been feeling.

We were in my office now—the office space divided into cubicles for paralegals like me. Aaron had seemed reluctant to follow me into the room. Maybe he thought that Prosecution Watch, Inc. was a government agency, aligned with the local county prosecutor’s office. Maybe he thought I was a lawyer, I had left Sparta to join forces with the world of law courts, law enforcement officers, statutes and penalties. Without exactly looking at me he spoke slowly and with an air of strain like one exerting force against a barely yielding object. I thought—he was still working at Kruller’s Auto Repair! He was still living the old Sparta life, that had exuded a kind of romance at one time, a romance exclusively masculine, physical. Ordinary speech was an effort to him, near-painful, as this subject was painful to him.

I remembered how he’d taken me from Duncan Metz’s hard hands—literally. I remembered when we were together in his aunt’s bathroom, and later in his car, he’d spoken very little to me, yet communicated so much. I thought
He is ashamed, even now. He remembers what he did.

I thought
He has no idea how I wanted it. Whatever he could do to me, I’d wanted.

In his manner Aaron reminded me of my brother Ben whom I saw now only once or twice a year, at our mother’s home in Port Oriskany in the western part of the state.

Lucille had remarried. Her husband was fifteen years older than she was, a semi-retired manufacturer’s representative with a Port Oriskany ball bearings company, a self-defined Christian. Lucille’s life was not the old Sparta life, she’d cast from her with the desperation with which one might cast off a water-logged coat, to save oneself from drowning.

“‘Jacky DeLucca.’ I haven’t seen her in twenty years.”

If Aaron was surprised to know that I knew Jacky DeLucca’s name, he gave no sign. When I pressed him more about what Jacky DeLucca might have to tell us he shrugged saying he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to speculate. Speaking of his mother hadn’t been easy for him, even now. His flat upstate voice had quavered, just perceptibly:
Zoe.

The reckless impulse came to me, to mime Zoe Kruller in her white Honeystone’s uniform.
Well say! Thought it was you.

In that throaty intimate voice
What can I do you for today?

And that sly hungry smile. Those hungry eyes.

Aaron was looking at me more openly now. I saw the hunger in those eyes, too: the sexually aggressive male, not entirely certain of his power over me, over the person I’d become. I wondered if he was remembering: the old connection between us.

In his aunt Viola’s bathroom. In those minutes his aunt had been elsewhere. Aaron Kruller forcing his weight on me, on my back; Aaron Kruller’s hands tightening around my neck.

A flush rose into his face. He remembered. He said:

“…should leave tonight. Now. I’ll drive you there, Krista.”

“Tonight! I can’t leave tonight….”

This was totally a surprise. My pretense of calm seeing Aaron Kruller here in my office after seventeen years had begun to waver.

But Aaron insisted: “We can get to Sparta by at least eleven o’clock tonight, if we leave now. Then in the morning we can go see DeLucca. On the phone she told me, ‘Mornings are my best time.’”

I began to stammer. I was feeling light-headed now, disoriented. It was shameful and astonishing to me, I’d begun to feel a low throbbing sexual yearning, in the man’s presence. Though saying, “Aaron, you can’t be serious! I can’t leave for Sparta tonight. I don’t have the kind of job I can just walk away from. I will need…” Rapidly my mind worked, thoughts spinning like wheels in mud. I was indignant, insulted. I wanted Aaron Kruller to know that my life was an important life, my responsibilities were considerable despite the small shared office, the utilitarian desk
and somber surroundings decorated by unframed wall posters of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper. “I will need to make arrangements about my work, I have appointments all day tomorrow. I’m due to visit Ossining. I’d need to reserve a motel room in Sparta….”

“You can stay with relatives, can’t you? Or with my aunt Viola, she knows you’re coming.”

Knows you’re coming.
Here was a man used to making decisions forcibly and without opposition; a man accustomed to giving orders.

I told him no, I didn’t want to stay with relatives. I didn’t want to stay with his aunt. He said he could call a motel for me, from his car. When we approached Sparta—“If you’re anxious about this.”

He’d been fingering his car keys. He was impatient to be moving on. In his face there was a glimmer of male superiority, subtly sexual, coercive. It was unconscious in him, I felt a stab of dislike. Badly I wanted to protest: Why hadn’t he called me, before coming all the way to Peekskill? Why, in seventeen years, hadn’t he made any attempt to contact me?

What had hurt was, when my father died, Aaron had not called me. Had not tried to see me. There was the deep, intimate connection between us, deeper than the connection between Ben and me, that could not be undone.

For Aaron Kruller had felt the blood beating in my throat. He’d felt my life coursing through me. And I’d felt the heat and urgency of his male-adolescent body, through his hands and through his groin he’d ground against me, in a trance of desire. There had been nothing like this in my life, there would be nothing like this in my adult life, what had passed between us could never be undone.

It was only by chance that I’d returned to the brownstone offices of Prosecution Watch, Inc. on Seventh Street, Peekskill, instead of returning home. Though it was past 4:00
P.M.
and a number of my colleagues, as well as my supervisor, had departed. What had happened in the prison had badly shaken me, the back of my head throbbed with pain and humiliation, my navy blue wool jacket had been torn, my plaited hair was partly undone. I could not bear the emptiness of the apartment that awaited me.

“I can leave in an hour or so, I suppose. But I have to go home first. And I’ll drive my own car to Sparta.”

“No. I’m driving.”

“And then—what? You’d drive me back to Peekskill, tomorrow?”

“Sure. I can do that.”

“Six hours? That’s ridiculous, Aaron.”

Casually I spoke his name: “Aaron.” I wanted this name to sound flat, ordinary. I wanted it to sound like a name that meant nothing to me. The man had called me “Krista” in this way—I had to wonder if it had been deliberate.

Were we quarreling? There was the sense that Aaron Kruller didn’t like to be contradicted in even small matters. He’d planned on driving me to Sparta with him, and now I was objecting, quite sensibly I was objecting, as Aaron might have anticipated that I would object; it was only common sense for me to take my own car. Maybe he didn’t trust me to drive capably enough to get there, and it was crucial that I come with him so that Jacky DeLucca could speak to us both, together.

Or maybe he wanted us to be together, in his car. On the drive back to Sparta in the night, north along the Thruway bounded by stretches of desolate landscape. Arriving late at a Sparta motel.

No love like your first.

I felt a constriction in my chest, a need to resist the man’s will, to oppose him. I was not a Sparta girl now, I was a young woman employed by Prosecution Watch, Inc.; I had university degrees, I supported myself and lived alone. I was not married or engaged: my left hand was ringless. There were men in my life but not crucial to my life. I wanted Aaron Kruller to sense this.

I told him that I would drive myself. I told him that I was a capable driver. I said he could keep my car in view as we drove, ahead of him on the Thruway.

He objected that in one car, it would be easier. If it began snowing, as it was predicted upstate.

Predicted upstate? I had not known this.

“Probably you aren’t used to driving at night, Krista. I am.”

“How do you know—‘probably’?”

“Are you? For six hours?”

Six hours. I felt a touch of panic. In my exhausted state, this was folly. This was not a good idea. Yet I would not retract my words, I would drive by myself, and I would leave within an hour. I said:

“I want my own car, Aaron. Without my own car, I’m not going at all.”

Rebuffed, Aaron finally gave in. He laughed, to show he was a good sport. “O.K., Krista. Have it your way.”

EXCEPT IF YOU HAVE A GHOST LEG THAT HURTS LIKE HELL

YOU CAN’T GET AN ARTIFICIAL LEG TO WORK

On the windowsill facing my desk this remark made by a client of mine is affixed, in hand-printed letters on stiff paper.

I would have liked Aaron Kruller to have noticed it, and commented on it. But that wasn’t Aaron Kruller’s way.

My client was a heavyset diabetic woman sentenced to an indeterminate “life” sentence on a charge of second-degree murder, for having stabbed her chronically abusive husband to death in 1974. By the time her case had been brought to the attention of Prosecution Watch, Inc., Jasmine had been incarcerated in Lyndhurst for twenty-seven years. She’d had inadequate medical treatment for her diabetes, her right foot had become gangrenous and had had to be amputated; eventually, her entire right leg had had to be amputated. She continued to feel sensation in these missing parts, sometimes severe pain.

Yet, Jasmine believed that the “ghost pain”—the phantom pain—was necessary so that, in her mind, she could locate the missing foot and leg. Without the pain, she couldn’t have used the artificial leg she’d been fitted with.

The non-profit organization for which I worked succeeded in getting
Jasmine’s second-degree murder charge reduced to voluntary manslaughter and so Jasmine was released from prison for “time served”—after nearly twenty-nine years.

Which was three times the amount of time she’d have probably served under the lesser charge.

By then, Jasmine was sixty-one. You could say that most of her life had been taken from her and was lost to her but Jasmine had not been bitter, she’d been grateful. No client of Prosecution Watch, Inc. had ever been more grateful.

Thank you THANK YOU! You have given me back my life and my hope Krista.

Taking my hands in hers. My smooth unmangled white-girl hands in her sixty-one-year-old dark-skinned hands that trembled with emotion. And when taking my hands wasn’t enough Jasmine hugged me, hard.

Know what Krista, I’m praying for you. You are the one I am praying for not me, my prayers are answered.

I wanted to think it was true, I had helped to give this woman back her life and her hope.

I wanted to think it was true, though I had virtually no power to modify my own past, and what remained of my future, yet I could help others like Jasmine. I could do this!

Through the power of Prosecution Watch, Inc., I could try to do this.

In my office that afternoon, I’d hoped that Aaron Kruller would notice the statement on my windowsill. I’d hoped that he would pause, and peer at it, curiously; read it aloud, as other visitors had done, and ask me about it; and so I would tell him its genesis, and what it meant.

Aaron would say
That’s wonderful Krista.

Or, Aaron would say
Krista that is profound. That is something to think about Krista.

Or
What wonderful work you’ve done, to bring justice to people who’ve been cheated of it. Like your father, and mine.

Of course, Aaron Kruller said none of these things. Aaron Kruller may have glanced at the printed statement on the windowsill, but he had
not come nearer, to read it; still less, to read it aloud in a wondering voice. Instead he said he’d wait for me downstairs at the front entrance, badly he needed a cigarette and there was no smoking in this building.

On the Thruway Aaron followed me in his car which was a new-model Buick. My car was a 1999 Saab bought from a colleague at a great bargain. In my rearview mirror his headlights held steady. In these driving conditions—icy rain, wind—I could not drive beyond sixty miles an hour. I mean, I did not want to drive beyond sixty miles an hour. Behind me Aaron Kruller was patient, overseeing. After seventeen years he was protective of me again. I wanted to think so.

My thoughts were in a turmoil: Aaron Kruller had re-entered my life.

Though in ways that would have been astonishing to him, he had never left my life.

And Jacky DeLucca. Of whom women like my mother had said contemptuously
Has she no shame?

Or maybe it was Zoe Kruller of whom my mother had spoken. The two women, living together on West Ferry Street. “Cocktail waitresses” out on the Strip. A way of saying “hookers”—who deserved whatever happened to them at the hands of men.

Lucille Bauer had not lacked for shame. Not her! My mother’s soul saturated in shame as in grease.

Driving north along the Thruway, I recalled Jacky DeLucca: the pale, heavy, vividly made-up face, the widened beseeching eyes and a craving for love so powerful it smelled of her fleshy body.
Zoe was my heart
she’d said wistfully stroking my arm, making me shiver for it was a strange intimate thing for an adult woman to say unlike anything my mother was likely to say in even a weak emotional moment.