Misfortune (46 page)

“Did I interrupt something?”

Aurelia paused for a moment. “No. Come in.”

Frances followed her mother through the front door and entrance foyer into the kitchen. Ordinarily filled with papers, cut flowers, oil paints, canvas, and brushes, the room now was a culinary shambles, with an omelet pan, an orange squeezer, a mixing bowl and pieces of a Cuisinart piled high in the sink, dishes stacked on the sideboard, and an empty Champagne bottle on the table along with two soiled napkins.

“How was your brunch?” Frances asked.

Aurelia’s face showed her surprise. Then, realizing the evidence was apparent from the state of her kitchen, she laughed again. “My daughter the detective.”

“Prosecutor,” Frances corrected her. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. I left.”

Aurelia said nothing. She opened the cupboard, removed two tall glasses, and filled them from a pitcher wet with condensation. She handed Frances a glass. “It’s lemonade.”

“We passed Malcolm on the way in.”

“We?” Aurelia asked.

“A friend drove me over. No one you know. Or should I say no one I think you know. I’ve underestimated your ability to get around.”

Frances had meant to tease her mother with a playful reference to her apparent relationship with Malcolm, but Aurelia ignored the remark. She sat at the table and indicated for Frances to do the same.

“I hope it’s what you wanted,” she said. “Quitting, I mean.”

Quitting.
Aurelia’s emphasis made the word resonate. That hadn’t been Frances’s characterization. In her own mind, she had spared herself the judgmental overtones of leaving the district attorney’s office, but now she felt her mother’s disappointment.

“I’m not exactly sure what I want these days….” She paused.

Aurelia seemed to stare at the lemon pulp floating on the surface of her glass.

“So what’s going on between you and Malcolm?”

Aurelia took a sip of her lemonade and licked her lips. “You needn’t worry about your old mother.”

The image of Malcolm helping Aurelia to her car after Clio’s memorial service flashed into Frances’s mind. At the time, watching them from the upstairs window of her father’s house, she had assumed that her mother and Malcolm had just met at the reception and that he had been polite enough to see the first wife off. Perhaps she had been wrong. Her view then had been too distant to notice a hint of affection or the suggestion of a mutual attraction. “How long has it been going on?”

Aurelia didn’t respond.

“What? You can’t tell me? He’s no longer my boss, so what does it matter?”

Aurelia looked up. “That isn’t it. If I’m reticent, it’s because I’m not used to having my own daughter grill me on my romantic life.”

Frances realized that she and her mother had never discussed boyfriends in any detail. Aurelia hadn’t even asked why her relationship with Pietro had ended. Instead of the intimacy and friendship that could have developed between them as she grew up, they had become increasingly distant. They shared little of their emotional lives.

“Let’s see,” Aurelia began, as if to embark on a recitation she had rehearsed several times before. “Henry and Louise Lewis invited me to a fund-raiser for Malcolm about a month ago. It was at their house here. I think they called it ‘an effort to retire his campaign debt.’ Henry thought I might be interested in meeting him, especially because of you. Taking an interest in my daughter’s career. So I gave my fifty dollars. I was hardly one of the big donors, but it got me in the door.”

Money well spent, Frances thought, judging from her mother’s upturned mouth and twinkling eye.

“He’s a charming man.” She blushed and suppressed a smile. The color in her skin made her look years younger.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

She laughed. “Oh, Fanny!”

Frances slumped in her chair. Her mother and her boss, or exboss…that was about the last thing she would’ve expected. She thought of her conversations with her mother over the last week, discussions of Clio’s murder and the investigation, of leads and dead ends. Now she understood how Malcolm knew what she had been up to. Aurelia had been reporting on her whereabouts, keeping the district attorney apprised of actions that Frances wished he knew nothing about. Perhaps she was also the source for information on Frances’s relationship with Clio.

“Did your decision to quit have anything to do with Clio’s murder?” Aurelia asked.

“Have you and Malcolm discussed the investigation?” Frances threw back.

“Not much.” Aurelia had never been particularly good at bluffing, and today was no exception. Frances knew she was lying. “I know they don’t have a suspect, but that’s about all. I also know that Malcolm wants that to stay out of the press.”

“I’m surprised the press isn’t on to the two of you,” Frances said.

“We’re discreet. Besides, who really cares what two middle-aged divorced adults do in their spare time.”

“Malcolm’s not divorced.”

Aurelia snorted in disgust. “He’s been separated from that…
woman
”—she said the word as if it were a fungus stuck to the roof of her mouth—“since the election. It’s only a matter of weeks until things become final. But I don’t appreciate the insinuation. I’m not a marriage breaker.”

“The expression is home wrecker.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“Are you two serious?”

“I’m surprised by your curiosity.” She smiled. “Let’s just say we’re getting to know one another. Now, I would like to change the subject. What have you decided to do instead? For employment, I mean?”

“I don’t have any immediate plans.”

“I don’t understand you. You were doing well there. Malcolm is quite disappointed.”

“I’d rather not talk about it under the circumstances,” Frances replied.

“Fine. I can respect that,” Aurelia said. “But I’ll just say one thing. Whatever you want to think about the situation with Malcolm, I’m still your mother. I know how much you’ve invested in that career of yours, and I’m concerned. It also upsets me that Clio’s murder is the thing that precipitated your departure. As if that woman didn’t do enough damage while she was alive.”

“It’s not this investigation. It’s not any one case in particular. It’s just the whole thing, the whole profession, the system.”

Aurelia furrowed her brow.

“You don’t want to hear all this,” Frances said by way of cutting the conversation short.

“That’s not true. You may think I don’t. But what matters to you, what motivates you, matters to me.”

Frances’s and Aurelia’s eyes met. Frances felt her heartbeat quicken as her mother extended a hand and rested it on top of her own. She shivered slightly, startled by the physical contact.

“Talk to me, Frances. I know you think you’ve got everything under control, and you probably do. But just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“It’s hard to explain, really,” she began, searching for words. “It’s not something that happened overnight. It’s just been a gradual realization that I shouldn’t be in this business.” She drank from her glass and felt the cold juice soothe her throat. This was not the conversation she had anticipated when she’d asked Meaty to drop her off. After her discovery of Katherine Henshaw, she’d simply wanted to see her mother, spend time making small talk, just visiting. She needed some semblance of a maternal bond, but she hadn’t intended to delve into her current occupational decisions.

Frances looked at her mother and wondered for a moment what to say, then decided on the truth. “Most everyone there has an agenda of some sort or another. Malcolm wants the publicity, the attention that comes with being a politician. He’ll run for higher office one of these days. People like Perry Cogswell, the assistant in charge of Clio’s murder, he wants power, underlings, the feeling that he can control the day-to-day life of others. I don’t want that. I don’t share those ambitions. Since I don’t want whatever this job may have led to, that left me with just a job. All I’ve done for the last thirteen years is process cases. Investigate them, indict them, try them, or plead them and try to get the court to impose a substantial sentence. My responsibility ends when the bailiff takes the defendants away, even if only metaphorically. For what? You know, I’m happiest in my garden with Felonious and Miss Demeanor.” Frances stopped talking. Her mouth felt dry.

“But it’s important work, keeping the streets safe and all that,” Aurelia said.

“Even the Fair Lawn Country Club isn’t safe. People talk a lot about justice being served. If a defendant gets convicted and sent away, then ‘justice is served,’ like some special item on a menu. I’ve seen the families of some victims where vengeance becomes their reason to live. All the rage and energy they can muster is poured into some perceived punitive goal. If they attain it, they lose the reason to live. Then there are others for whom the process—whether the killer is found, tried, even executed—is virtually irrelevant. What victim is ever really made whole? Look at Dad.”

Frances thought of Richard in his wheelchair, staring out across the lawn of his exquisite, empty home.

“You know, I remember the first time that a guy I prosecuted was sentenced to prison. It wasn’t even my case. Just after I got to the Manhattan DA’s Office, before I’d even been admitted to the New York Bar, I second-chaired a trial, you know, helping the prosecutor out, preparing witnesses, handing him documents. The defendant was the principal of one of the public elementary schools on the Lower East Side. He embezzled funds, including state money allocated for students with special needs. It was truly heinous. The guy spent the cash that was supposed to go to build the handicapped ramp for two kids with cerebral palsy on an apartment for his girlfriend. The kids’ lunch money went to pay for a trip to the Bahamas. The judge sentenced him to three years while his loyal wife and two kids were in the front row of the courtroom crying hysterically and calling out that they loved him. The special needs kids were there, too, confused by the proceeding, not really understanding why their principal was being manhandled by a couple of court officers. It was all I could do to get out to the street, before I burst into tears. Who was the winner in that situation?”

“Why now? Why did Clio’s investigation make you quit?” Aurelia asked.

“I think I’ve had these questions simmering in the back of my mind all along, but I never paid much attention to them. Another day. Another defendant. Now I see Dad, and it finally hit me. Nothing, not finding the killer, not tearing his eyes out, not sentencing him to death, will make Dad feel any better. For him, Clio’s death is no different from Justin’s. Whether by murder or by accident, he’s left with an unfillable void.” Frances looked up at her mother. She suddenly felt exhausted, overwhelmed by articulating the thoughts that had spun in her mind. She couldn’t hold back her tears. Eyes burning, she rested her head in her forearms and let the sound of her own sobs envelope her.

She felt her mother’s hand rubbing her hair in slow circles. It was a familiar sensation, something that Aurelia had done over and over for Frances as a child, a soothing contact that, in Frances’s memory, seemed to substitute for words unsaid and conversations not had, but which had established an intimacy between them. It had been a part of their good-night ritual, until Frances had reached an age when such rituals had to be abandoned.

As Frances’s sobbing subsided, the rubbing stopped. Frances heard her mother push her chair back and get up from the table. When she looked up Aurelia was at the sink. She put on rubber gloves and turned on the faucet to do the dishes.

“I’m sorry,” Frances said.

Aurelia did not turn around. “It’s hard to watch you in such pain.”

Frances sat for a moment, watching her mother scrape the plates, rinse them quickly, and load them into the dishwasher. Her head was pounding. “Do you have any aspirin?”

“Check my medicine cabinet. There should be something.”

Frances helped herself up and slowly worked her way down the hall to the bathroom at the end. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it all the way open. Sunlight through the window filled the white-tiled room. Frances turned and stood facing the mirrored cabinet. In her reflection, the shower curtain behind her provided a colorful floral background to frame her red, swollen face. She reached for the handle and pulled open the medicine cabinet.

Frances took the plastic aspirin bottle off the shelf and shook it gently. Nothing rattled. Empty.

Bending over, she opened the undersink vanity and perused the clutter, rolls of toilet paper, antacid tablets, cough syrup, antihista-mines, disinfectants, and bandages. She pushed aside several bottles, searching for ibuprofen, aspirin, any pain reliever, but found nothing. Then, a single sheet of paper folded multiple times into a one-inch strip caught her eye. She pulled it out.

Her hands shook as she unfolded the paper and stared at the words.
Active Ingredient: Dexedrine.
It was the directions and warnings for the use of Thinline appetite suppressants.

Do not take more than one capsule per day. Use of this medication has been associated with strokes, seizure, heart attack, arrhythmia, and death. Do not take if you are taking a prescription monoamine oxidase inhibitor for depression.

Phenelzine and Dexedrine, Nardil and Thinline, a fatal combination.

Frances stifled a cry. She found herself gasping and managed to keep herself erect only by leaning against the vanity. Water on the rim of the porcelain basin seeped through the fabric of her shirt.

“Did you find it?”

Frances jumped back at the sound of her mother’s voice, dropping the Thinline package insert onto the floor.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Aurelia’s eyes fixed on the paper. She bent and picked it up. “I thought you were interested in aspirin.”

“When—when did—you…buy Thinline?” Frances stammered.

“Several months ago,” Aurelia answered quickly. Her voice was flat, controlled. “They made me so jumpy, I couldn’t concentrate. Then I ate to try to calm myself down.” She forced a laugh. “These hips will be mine until the day I die. There’s nothing I can do to change nature.” She patted herself. “Your father used to tell me that he liked voluptuous women. Either he changed his mind later in life, or he lied.”