Philly Stakes (7 page)

“I ask you, Macavity,” I said. “Is it worse to mail factory-signed, computer-labeled completely impersonal greeting cards or mean to send cards with wonderful, personal messages, but never complete them?”

Instead of answering, he began worrying the top of my stack of unmailed missives, tapping gently, experimentally, until the top card slid off. Satisfied, he began on the next card down. Tap, tap, a furry scientist conducting an experiment. “But why,” I asked, “must I arbitrarily use this particular New Year’s, after all?” I decided to choose another New Year’s as a deadline. The Russian Orthodox was too soon. Maybe the Chinese? Or the Jewish—that gave me till next autumn.

I finally remembered to listen to my phone messages. Mackenzie said he’d call later if possible. That he was glad to see that I had mastered the machine. That he was pretty tied up, so maybe tomorrow. Or late tonight. But I shouldn’t count on anything.

Live or on tape, the man said the same damn thing.

“Miss Pepper? This is Jenny Crittendon? From Silverwood?” The Pillsbury Dough Grandma’s voice sounded sixty years younger than she was. “We’re so upset because we forgot to invite you to the Tuesday group’s holiday party. It’s this coming Tuesday—of course!” She giggled. “The day after Christmas. Cookies at one. And we thought, since you’re on vacation this week, maybe you could be part of our daytime group this one time? We’d really like you to come. Really. Please? Oh, I hope this isn’t too late. They’ll be so mad. I was supposed to ask you last week! We all hope to see you. Tuesday. One o’clock. In the dayroom. Oh, and we sent you that copy of our stories and we hope it doesn’t get lost in the Christmas rush and we all hope you enjoy them.” She sounded out of breath by the end.

There were certain disadvantages to a machine, I now knew. If I had never gotten the message from Jenny Crittendon, then I wouldn’t feel uneasy about an invitation I hadn’t sought and wasn’t overly excited about. I liked those people, certainly, but I’d be busy getting ready for Florida next Tuesday and Silverwood was across the city. I wished I hadn’t heard how eager Jenny sounded, and I wished I wasn’t now wondering about how her Christmas was going to be with her children two thousand miles away. Minna White was in that class, too, and I wondered if the dreadful Junior would visit her or whether Tuesday’s party was going to be the event of the season for lots of the people at Silverwood.

The tape continued. “What’s this? A machine?” My mother’s feelings were audibly hurt. “I called to see how your party went, but…well, a machine! This feels like talking to myself. So, ah, good-bye.” Pause. “Oh, yes. This was your mother. Beatrice Pepper. And oh! You wanted the time, right? It’s—it’s—Amanda, I don’t have my glasses on and I don’t know where they are, and my watch is—why do I have to tell you the time, anyway? I taught you how to tell it yourself twenty-five years ago. Call me.”

I was so bemused by my mother that the next message almost escaped me. I ran the tape back and listened again. “Miss Pepper?” It took a second to realize it was Laura Clausen. We had spoken so infrequently, and on those few occasions I had prompted and begun the conversation. Laura sounded as surprised as she sounded timid. “The police—they said you called my house? I’m at my aunt’s in the city because—well, you know, the house is…and I’ll…” I could hear her breathe, could almost hear her deciding what she wanted to say. “I guess you’re still at school, so I’ll call again. Tomorrow, because I have to go out now.” Silence. Then, “Uh, good-bye,” and a click.

No number to call. I had planned to be out all the next day, doing a blitz of just-under-the-wire Christmas shopping, but if I were gone, Laura and I might never connect. I wasn’t going to ignore her signals for help ever again.

My feet and head both still hurt, but I hauled myself up and pulled the boots back on. With Mackenzie detecting elsewhere, I had a long Friday afternoon and evening ahead to get my shopping out of the way so that I could wait for Laura’s call tomorrow. Maybe I’d finish my Christmas cards.

I wandered toward Wanamaker’s men’s department. The big shopping problem was, of course, none else than Mackenzie. It was important to find the absolutely right gift for our first Christmas. Something loving—but not so intensely so that it produced a fight-or-flight response. Something that meant a great deal—but not too much. Something much more in focus than we were.

My headache increased in the damp wind, but through its little lightning strikes of pain flipped a mental catalogue of menswear. Men’s gift options were limited, expensive and subtle. What’s the male equivalent of good, but noncommittal costume jewelry? C.K. wasn’t of the gold chain, pinky ring or cuff links variety, and tie clips didn’t say much.

He had a good wallet. He didn’t wear cologne.

All dress shirts look alike, and didn’t you have to measure arms and necks, anyway?

Belts, braces, socks, even cashmere; handkerchiefs, even of the finest weave, were impossibly boring—or overpriced.

Men’s games were an obvious choice. Things that clicked, whirred, shifted gears and went from zero to a thousand in a second. Prizes for the testosterone set. And out of my price range.

Robes were nice, but his mother gave him one every year. He didn’t wear pajamas.

Ties were the ultimate cartoon-strip gift. Besides, every man I’ve known fixates on one pattern—paisleys, amoebas at play, tiny ducks. Mackenzie was a stripe man. Debating green stripes vs. blue seemed a major nonevent and surely receiving the final choice would be the same.

I found a cable-knit sweater the color of his eyes, but it cost too much. I touched it, loved it, imagined it warming and cozying his flesh, and it still cost too much. If only I had learned to knit like everybody else.

When I found myself fondling a soap-on-a-rope, I knew I needed a break.

I felt better as soon as I left the land of slacks and socks and was surrounded by the soaring central court, nine stories of gilded columns, and shoppers who looked much less impatient and discouraged than I. There was something permanent and comforting in the old, space-wasting, extravagant architecture. It gave a benediction to shopping as did the rich Bach cantata that poured out of the massive pipe organ, flooding the court and sanctifying our purchases.

I gravitated toward the enormous bronze eagle, the city’s designated meeting place.

And bumped, literally, into a very startled Laura Clausen.

“I’m sorry!” she said after a moment. “I didn’t see you. I was…thinking.”

We stood there awkwardly. I, too, apologized for not paying attention, then finally asked a potentially rude but real question. “Are you…shopping?” I didn’t expect her to rend her clothes or keen, but still, it seemed odd to be in John Wanamaker’s less than twenty-four hours after her father was incinerated.

“No.” Her voice was tiny and fearful, and I was sorry I’d asked. “My mother—I had to walk her to the doctor.” She looked at her watch. “She’ll be a while, so I came here.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I think better when there are lots of people I don’t know around.” I saw a flicker of the Save me terror, and then it disappeared.

“I got your message,” I said. “I’m not in any rush.”

She shrugged again. Here she was in the heart of the great emporium, completely out of style in her baggy Doris Day good-girl togs. The essence of innocence, and so small. She was delicately made, fragile, peering out of enormous dark eyes with such intensity that I felt guilty for all I didn’t know or have to offer.

“I called you back a few minutes ago,” she said, “to say never mind. That first message, well, it was just a mood. Now I’m okay.”

She definitely wasn’t. “Then how about a soda, or coffee?” I said.

She checked her watch again, and reluctantly agreed.

* * *

“I’m sorry about your father.” We were across the street, on stools at Woolworth’s. I love the aroma of five-and-dimes—pressed powder, hot-dog casings, goldfish and laminated menus.

Laura acknowledged my condolences with a twist of her mouth. She had a milk shake. I had black coffee. Saving calories for the madcap whirl of holiday parties the magazines promised me.

Laura seemed engrossed in tracing lines down the side of her water glass.

I leaped in, both feet first. “Laura, maybe this is a dumb time for it, but I wanted to talk about your paper. About Icarus—about Auden’s poem.”

She did a sequence of softly spastic body motions that seemed to translate into: Yeah, great, who cares, so what?

“It…troubled me,” I said. “There’s a great tension, a—”

“It isn’t good?”

“It’s marvelous. Exceptional. The best in the class.” She looked relieved, then slumped over her milk-shake straw.

I spoke slowly, picking my way carefully between the words. “But I had the feeling you were talking about more than Icarus.”

She sipped. “I’d better go,” she murmured.

I looked at my watch. Five thirty-five. I took a chance. I was sure it was the sort of doctor’s appointment that has a set time. Like a fifty-minute hour. “Doesn’t she have fifteen more minutes?”

Laura pursed her lips.

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I said. “But sometimes it helps to talk to someone.”

Deep in my brain, I heard a voice from the past. “You’re their teacher,” my department chair had said the first day I arrived at Philly Prep. “Not their friend, not their pal, not their psychiatrist. You won’t serve them well if you ever forget that.” I still didn’t know if you could so neatly slice up the many roles of a teacher, but I knew I had been treading out of bounds, so I backed off. We would share a fifteen-minute respite, then go our separate ways.

“I’ll talk to my mother’s shrink.” She sounded defiant and frightened. “He’d like my dreams, wouldn’t he? You’ve seen them. The safe murders. The fires. He’d eat them up.”

So much for proper professional reserve. Laura was being deliberately provocative, obviously in need of a reaction. “You still have those dreams?”

“I think so.”

I busied myself with a second cup of coffee, stirring in sweetener, and I made what I hoped was a wordless but sympathetic and encouraging sound.

“I’m not always sure if I’m asleep.” She sounded in a dream state at the moment. “So are they dreams, or what?”

“Everybody has daydreams.” But of course, that wasn’t what she was talking about. She was talking about wide-eyed nightmares. Insanity.

She picked up her purse and stood.

“Laura—where can I reach you? We could talk more. I’m not trying to be your psychiatrist. I just want you to understand that you aren’t out there alone.”

She stood behind the row of stools, staring down at a ring she wore. It had a tiny blue stone. She twirled it around and around her finger. “I did it, you know.” She was barely audible.

No. I won’t listen. I refuse to hear.

“It wasn’t an accident. I killed him. I’m not sorry, either.”

My mouth pursed, and a soft windy noise came out, but no words.

“The other time, they say it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I let it burn.”

“What happened last night is terrible, very sad, but why think you had anything…” She was pulling further and further inside herself. And yet she stood there, testing whether I’d follow her lead.

“Why?” I asked again. “What do you think you did?”

I hadn’t followed her lead at all. Instead, I’d taken the wrong path through the maze and dead-ended. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”

I thought about Daedalus and Icarus. “Then tell me,” I said. “Who is Daedalus? What did he do to you?” In the silence that followed my question, I became aware of the impossible contradictions between our conversation and our surroundings. We were talking about a possible murder while a nasal voice on the loudspeaker announced a special on artificial snow.

Laura turned away. I paid the bill and followed her through tinsel-edged aisles. She paused in cosmetics, oddly transfixed. I remembered how soothing, how promising Woolworth’s nail-polish display had been to me in my teens, symbolizing the infinite possibilities of womanhood and promising that with the right lacquer came the right life. But I had never been grappling with Laura’s kind of problems.

“Maybe you had one of those dreams,” I said.

She shook her head. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” She examined a shrieking red bottle. Her own nails were unpolished.

“What’s your aunt’s name?”

“Alma.” She held fluorescent purple polish to the light, as if it were a gemstone.

“Alma Clausen?”

“Leary. My mom’s sister.” She was so small and frail. “My dad doesn’t—didn’t—have any relatives. Except for me, I guess. Lot of good it did him.”

“It was an accident!” I insisted. “Why even think you had a part in it? It’s not in you—it’s not who you are!”

“Of course it is,” she said. “Everybody knows how I am. He certainly did. I wanted to do it. I thought about it all the time. And I did it. That’s how I am.” She looked at her watch again. “I have to go. My mom—she’s pretty wobbly.” She put down the polish and walked out of the store.

I hurried behind, then walked beside her. Tiny strings of lights glimmered against the branches of the trees on Broad Street. They reminded me of last night, of the lights along the river, of the twinkling candles all over Clausen’s house. “Laura—why did you call me today?”

“I was going to tell you before the police. I don’t know why. Then it seemed dumb. I changed my mind, but look how it turned out—I told you anyway. Things I imagine have a way of happening for real, like I said.” Her nose and cheeks were ruddy with the cold.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody else. There is no reason, nothing to be gained from it. Tell your mother’s doctor if you have to talk about it. I think you’re hysterical, Laura, or feeling guilty about the quarrel last night, or feelings you’ve had. Accidents happen, and they remain accidents even if you imagined them, or thought about them. Don’t put yourself in jeopardy. Please?”

She looked puzzled. She also looked exhausted. We paused at the corner near a thin Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell. “She’s in there,” she said.

I had to negotiate further. “Before you say anything to anyone official, call me. Talk to Detective Mackenzie.”