Philly Stakes (17 page)

One day, the man found Etienne’s cloak in a field. Myson said he had run away, ashamed because he had killed the horses and starved others and now, the stables were ruined and had to be sold. It was all Etienne’s fault, he said.

But the man knew Myson lied. Etienne never let his cloak out of his sight. The man’s wife said he must tell the King, that it was hard to say that his adopted son was a liar and probably a thief, but this was their true test at long last. They would soon be heroes.

Instead, when the man told the King, the King became angry and called him a jealous liar and told him to leave the kingdom.

Myson opened his own stables. The man was forbidden to come near it. Impoverished and broken, reputation ruined, he died.

The widow and her child huddled together and lived like the squirrels and birds. And one day, when deep snow buried all hope of food and they were starving, they ate the book of fairy tales, heroes and heroines, happy endings, virtues rewarded and all.

And that is what I will never forget.

Minna White

“What do you suppose that means?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. But it feels as if I were just tattooed with it. It feels permanent. As the lady says, ‘that is what I will never forget.’” I read it all the way through again. It still didn’t make sense, and it still clung to me.

Ten

NEXT MORNING, WE SAID AMAZINGLY AMICABLE FAREWELLS, ALL THINGS considered, including how early it was. Mackenzie was going to leave immediately after his shift, so there was no other time.

“You’ll be back the first?” he asked at the door.

I nodded.

“New Year’s Eve in Florida,” he said. “Your last night in the tropics. Moon over Miami or wherever. Be careful.”

I envisioned the condominium complex’s social room, a drink with a fluorescent pink umbrella sticking out of it, the stuttering podiatrist and me wearing fool hats and blowing noisemakers, reassuring Beatrice Pepper and friends that we were having fun.

“I thought to come back earlier,” Mackenzie said, “but standby’s good as I could get, so I didn’t bother you to hurry home. Amazin’ how many people are rushing to and from New Orleans.”

It was something. More than he’d been willing to say until now.

“So we’ll celebrate the New Year on New Year’s Night instead of its Eve.” He kissed me. “You’re not hung up on dates that way, are you?” He kissed me again. “Course not.”

He didn’t notice that this was not a two-way conversation. Yes, I should have said, owning up to yet another neurosis.

Yes, yes. I believe that certain dates are heavy with meaning and magical portents and New Year’s Eve is the biggie. The feel of midnight is the feel of the year, according to my irrational but powerful mental set. Which meant I could anticipate an interminably long, romantically dismal twelve months ahead, thanks or no thanks to Mackenzie.

“Certainly would prefer spending the time with you, ’stead of my cousins and all. ’Course with you wanting to see your folks, I didn’t want to push on you.” He shrugged. Until this moment, neither of us, obviously, had even once said what we really wanted of these holidays. It hadn’t been allowed in the rules of our game, so we were both losing. High time to change the game. My first New Year’s resolution.

“See you in six days. I’ll bring champagne.” Moments later, he was gone.

“Fine,” I said to myself, tidying the room at long last. “Fine. Fahn!” I had things to do, sun block to buy, people to see. Maybe Minna White would actually have something interesting to say about why she was not sad about Alexander Clausen’s death. If, indeed, she was not. My mother had a habit of holding old acquaintances in suspended animation, treating whatever whim they entertained when last seen as a lifelong obsession. The likelihood was that Minna had forgotten whatever it was, or outgrown it, or outlived it while my mother clung to the memory.

I felt abruptly depressed about how efficiently I had messed up my Christmas vacation. I dialed Sasha. She had changed her message, but I knew she could do that by remote. “Sasha Berg, Photographer. Sorry,” her recorded voice said, “but I’m on assignment and can’t come to the phone right now. If you’ll leave your…” She sounded on the verge of hysterical laughter and not one bit contrite at missing her callers.

“You’re making him sound like a chore,” I told her machine. “I know you’ve picked up your messages, so you know I need those shots you took at the party, but maybe I didn’t make it sound urgent enough. Even if you’re permanently stuck to your assignment, could you drop the film off, or something? I need those pictures. Desperately. It’s your garden-variety life-and-death situation.” I hung up, hoping that Mr. Assignment proved a short-term dud.

Sasha and I spent a lot of time recuperating from the men who visited our lives. The difference was, she had one hell of a good time until the end, while I too often dithered and quibbled my way through the good parts.

This variety of self-analysis sounded even more boring than boarding the cat and visiting a convalescent home, so I dressed in my hundred layers and, with apologies, put Macavity in his cardboard carrier and countered his plaintive protests with a frank explanation of how things stood.

“Listen, little guy,” I said, “it’s going to be cold and lonely around here. Not homey, and no food, either. You love the vet, remember?” I had to keep talking, nonstop, to prevent a feline psychotic break. Even with my babble, when faced with a car ride, Macavity began jet-propelled shedding. A long enough ride, and he’d be bald. “Remember your pals at Dr. Chang’s?” I said. “Think of this as your Christmas vacation. A change of scenery is—”

We were halfway out the door when the phone rang. Perhaps Sasha was back. Or all flights today and tomorrow had been canceled. Or my mother was warning me to stay at home because of hurricane warnings. Or—

But the voice that finally spoke was tentative and small. “Well,” it said, sounding discouraged. “I’ll call back later, I guess. I, um—”

I galumphed across the room, still carrying the cat and hampered by about twenty pounds of outerwear, and lifted the receiver. “Laura?” I said. “I’m here. What’s up?”

“Oh, I thought you were… Well, it’s not anything, really. Just that my mother…”

It was no longer Christmas and we were back to business as usual. Undoubtedly the police had asked Alice to identify the body in the storage shed. “Is she very upset?” I asked.

Macavity mewled nonstop.

“Well, yes, actually.” Her breath caught.

“I’m sorry. Did she know who he was?”

“Who?”

“Your mother.” I put the cat carrier down, and Macavity grew silent and meditative.

“What about my mother?”

I pulled off my hat. Perhaps it was cutting off brain circulation, interfering with my comprehension. “Could she identify the body?”

“What body?”

“The man! The man we found in the…we aren’t talking about the same thing, are we?”

“I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“About the—never mind. What are you talking about?”

“My mother.”

“Yes. What about her?”

I could hear Laura take a deep breath and slowly exhale. “She’s away. In…at a…residential treatment center. A…place to rest. She’s very upset.”

Which was a pretty fair description of how Laura herself sounded. “Oh. Oh my. Oh, I’m sorry, Laura. This just happen?”

“Yes.” In a tiny, defeated voice. “A few minutes ago.”

“Do you know for how long?”

“No.”

“Had she gotten—what happened?”

There was such a long silence, I apologized for having created it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked. Listen, I—”

“Since Christmas Eve. She couldn’t stop. All the time. About it, about him. Apologizing. Crying. About her crimes, she said. About wanting to be dead. I think being with my aunt’s family, with all of them together, the holiday might have… I don’t know. I thought when they left this morning, maybe she’d feel better, but she didn’t, because even then she kept begging me to…to forgive her. The doctor tried a shot first, and she was already on some kind of tranquilizer, but she was drinking a lot, too, so they were afraid, and…the police called, too, this morning, about coming to the morgue, but that only—she couldn’t, she…well… So I called the doctor again, and… Well, I thought you’d want to know.” The tidal wave of information was over.

“I’m so sorry. So sorry.” I couldn’t think of anything else, or anything truer to say.

Then silence filled our receivers. I pictured her sitting by the hall phone in that hard-surfaced apartment, all gleam and loneliness.

Nobody else was in the picture.

She’d said something about Alma and family leaving. I remembered. A trip to Antigua, wasn’t it? And Laura had been left with an increasingly despondent, or hysterical, mother.

Now she was all alone, and that was the real message. She would probably be placed in a group home or foster care as soon as somebody noticed. Except she had let me notice first. She was no better at communicating what she needed this holiday season than Mackenzie and I had been, but she had youth as her excuse, and at least she was trying.

“Laura,” I asked, “are you alone?”

“It’s okay. There’s food, and, um, tapes and books.”

“I know you’re competent, but I don’t like the whole idea of your being alone, so to put my mind at ease, please stay here until we figure out something else. I have a spare room with a roll-away on the top floor.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. It’s your vacation. You’re going away.”

“No…that was just a…possibility. Anyway, it’ll be a treat. In fact, for starters, I have to go to the Italian market. Ever been there?”

“No,” she said. “But still, I can’t…”

“Fine. It’s done. Pack your bags. I’ll be by in thirty minutes. That enough time?”

“Yes, sure, but—”

“Done.”

I immediately began reassuring my conscience. My offer had nothing to do with getting out of my Florida obligation or escaping from the podiatrist. It had to do with Laura, with decency and priorities. Didn’t it?

My conscience began to look more and more like my mother, a more formidable and skeptical antagonist. I decided on the manatee defense. Could the chairperson of HLH, Hava Little Hu-Manatee, not take pity on another endangered species? Laura was as gentle and without defenses as those sweet doomed sea cows, only it wasn’t motorboat propellers and pollution destroying her. Neither creature had any idea of how to fight, even when it meant saving their lives. My mother would have to understand. Besides, I’d visit in January.

* * *

The Italian market bustled. Corrugated tin roofs rattled in the cold wind over sidewalk tables full of life. Laura and I crossed the street, kicking aside cut-up and discarded produce cartons. We walked past tables of winter fruit—cornucopias of crisp apples, dusty gold pears, deep purple grapes, and oversized navel oranges that reminded me of the need to call Florida and give an update. Past the vegetable displays—hard-shelled squash, potatoes, onions, things with roots and tenacity holding on through the chill; and delicate imports, tomatoes and artichokes and red, green and yellow bell peppers.

This bustling, noisy, confusing market, unlike antiseptic indoor food stores, activated my often-dormant domestic streak. I wanted to devote my life to orchestrating rich and colorful soups, salads, and fruit bowls, to covering my arms with flour as I kneaded bread. Here, foraging seemed a sensual adventure. It was, for example, necessary to compare several vendors’ peppers for price and beauty before rushing to judgment. Nothing was uniform, homogenized, prepackaged or predictable.

We weighed eggplants in our palms, compared cucumbers, ducked into tiny shops for a blast of warm air and fresh pasta in one, herbs in another and cheese in a third, planning a feast for the evening. Laura, despite the heavy bags of trouble she was carrying, seemed lighter and more animated than I had ever seen her.

“How could I have forgotten garlic?” I said just as we approached the cannoli shop. Inside, customers filled every inch of floor space.

“I saw some down the street.” Laura seemed invigorated by every part of the process, excited by this infinitesimal bit of control over her life—deciding what she’d eat and choosing it. She glanced into the packed store. “I’ll get it and meet you back here.”

I pressed my way into the crowd and waited my turn, embroiled this time in a caloric argument with my conscience. The filled crepes looked irresistible, but I would resist. I decided to buy Minna four cannoli, one of each flavor of sweet ricotta filling. And reassured myself that I would not touch a single pastry.

However, Laura deserved an after-dinner treat, and offering only one seemed Scrooge-like, so I’d buy one of each again, having them on hand—not for my hands, of course, but…

“If I had known you loved the food of my ancestors, I’d never have suggested a WASP minimalist restaurant like Lissabeth’s.”

Nick Riley successfully terminated my grapples with conscience. “I didn’t know cannoli were an Irish dish,” I said, oddly glad to see him again.

“I am an Irish dish. But also an Italian dish, thank you,” he said. “What are you doing on my stomping grounds?”

I remembered he’d said he lived nearby.

“I thought you’d be at your parents by now.” I found it flattering that he remembered such minor data about me. “If I’d known you were in town, I would have called,” he added, flattering me even more.

“I had to cancel the trip. Last-minute change of plans. How’s your article going?”

“Every time I nearly finish, the story changes. Now that it’s officially a murder, I need a handle on what really happened so I don’t wind up with egg on my face.”

“Would you look at that,” I said. Amongst the various Italian delights, there was a square tray of three-cornered pastries, each with a dollop of filling. I scanned the row of labels, unable to tell which identified the tray. “Zuccotto,” one said. “Il Diplomatico.” “Chiacchiere della nonna.” “Torta Sbricciolona.”

“What?” Nick said. “Look at what?”

“Those pastries. They look exactly like my great-aunt Rachel’s hamantaschen. Haman’s hats, for the Purim holiday. But here they are in an Italian bakery—isn’t that intriguing? A great example of cross-cultural borrowing. I wonder if they’re the Zeppole di San Giuseppe. Do you think that means St. Joseph’s hat? Instead of Haman’s?”