Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (22 page)

“That’s what I’m doing here. Listen, what makes one Tarot reader better than another?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I wish I knew. I just get the right cards, that’s all. But also I know things. I don’t know how I do, but I do. See, that’s the spooky part. I don’t know if the cards cue what I know or if I magically turn up the right cards. Maybe it’s something in the fingertips— energy, I mean. Something.”

“You never had any formal training?”

“Just from my mom.” He looked surprised. “You mean there’s schools you can go to or something?”

“I don’t know.” No sense mentioning Rosalie.

He dropped me, and I read a murder mystery while I waited for dinner— I was way too keyed up to sleep, but grateful for the psychic respite, you should excuse the expression.

I’d been told dinner would be casual, so I pulled out a pair of flowered shorts and a T-shirt. I wished for some sandals but had to make do with Nikes. At seven I was ready, and at seven Michael arrived. If Maurizio had surprised me with his glamour, Michael shocked me with his ordinariness. I had never seen Jason, but I had seen their sister, and I was prepared, I guess, for something along the lines of a dragon rampant— not an unfriendly one, just a creature you’d notice.

Michael had all too obviously taken to heart the warnings about using sunscreen. Or perhaps, owing to being a musician, he didn’t get out much before sunset. He had longish brownish thinning hair, which he wore in a ponytail, and he was average height, but a little chubs. His face was apple-round, his features heavy more or less nondescript— and pale as a petal. I wondered why the magnificent Maurizio carried a torch for him. He wore cut-off khakis and a vintage shirt, something from the fifties, I thought, quietly chic in an Atlanta way that probably wouldn’t be noticed, if other clothes I saw were any indication.

He shook my hand vigorously, pumped it good, but didn’t really say much other than “Hi.”

He helped me into a brown Blazer and got back on the ubiquitous expressway. “Maurizio’s condo’s near Sandy Springs. Hardly anyone lives in town, you know.”

“This place is a little like L.A., isn’t it?”

“Not really,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

“I meant, you know, all freeways and malls.”

He nodded. “Mmm.”

It was going to be a long ride. I decided to get through it by looking out the window. Which afforded lots of great views of cars.

Finally I got up the nerve to say, “I didn’t know your brother, but he was a terrific writer. Everyone thought so.”

He said, “Thank you. We aren’t a close family.”

I went back to the cars.

Maurizio lived in quite a snazzy condo, which, he explained, was possible because he had a roommate (tactfully out for the evening). The feature I liked best was a perfect little backyard, where Maurizio was barbecuing chicken.

Michael headed straight for the refrigerator, silently removed two beers, and handed one to me. Though I’m not much of a beer drinker, I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I popped my top and swigged.

But Maurizio was scandalized, “Don’t drink those filthy things. Let’s have fuzzy navels.”

I don’t know if this is a nationally known drink, but I later questioned a number of San Franciscans who’d never heard of it. It’s a drink ideally suited to Georgia, thoroughly refreshing in the heat; kind of a screwdriver with a Southern accent. I’ve never been quite sure, but I think the ingredients are vodka, orange juice (the navel part), and peach schnappes (the fuzz). What I do know: the result is peachy keen.

As we sipped, the guys talked sports for a while and exchanged tidbits about mutual friends. Michael polished off his fuzzy navel and helped himself to another. His color changed as he drank, grew pinker and friendlier, along with his demeanor. He was shy, perhaps, and drank consciously to loosen up. More likely, I think, he was hostile to me, to the idea of talking about his brother; he’d been roped into the evening, and was oiling up for the ordeal. Maurizio was quite the operator, I thought, remembering I’d flown three thousand miles myself. I still didn’t see what he saw in Michael, but I was getting an idea why Michael would dump him— the man was dangerous.

But heck. He barbecued a mean chicken, which he served with salad— a green one with lots of avocados, black beans and rice, and fried plantains. For dessert he’d made key lime pie. Throughout dinner he kept up a three-way conversation, no small feat considering Michael’s wariness.

By the time we’d made a good-sized dent in the pie, Michael knew pretty much about my family— my mom who’s overprotective, my sister Mickey, who’s sweet as a sundae and works for Planned Parenthood, my dad the famous defense lawyer, and my sister’s boyfriend, the ne’er-do-well actor. It was Kruzick that won him over, I think— the fact that I had to put up with him in my office. Suddenly I had all his sympathy. Either that or the fuzzy navels had done their work. He was smiling at me now, even sometimes, in a fit of wild abandon, addressing the odd remark to me. Maurizio began to lead him skillfully to the matter at hand.

“Listen, Michael, you know what we talked about.”

He sobered. “Yeah.” And looked down at his plate. “Let me get you another drink.”

When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. “I don’t think I can tell the story without it.”

When he had a new drink— this time a bourbon and water— and had drunk a few sips of it, he said, “This thing tore our family apart. It’s like, really, really hard to talk about. I was fourteen when it happened, and I had this big brother that I more or less worshipped and then, like
boom
, the whole thing was shattered. Everything. Tressa was twelve. She, like, never even acknowledges the rest of us anymore. And our parents more or less disowned Jason. He was out on the streets, practically, right afterward. We tried to keep in touch, but, I don’t know.…” He took a big swallow of the drink and put it down. “After that, nothing was normal. And it never will be again.”

Maurizio said, “Okay, you were fourteen, Jason was eighteen, and Tressa was twelve. You were all together when it happened?”

“Well, it was summer, and Jason was about to leave for college. I think he thought he might miss us, or he’d never have let us go with him. See, he was the only one who could drive, and he said, come on, let’s take Max for a walk above Inspiration Point. It was, like, a Saturday afternoon; maybe a Sunday. There were a whole lot of people out.” He winced slightly and went quiet for a while. “Anyway, he’d never done anything like that before. Never! Tres and I thought we’d died and gone to heaven.”

“Inspiration Point?” I asked. “You lived in the Bay Area?”

He nodded. “You know Inspiration Point? In Tilden?”

“I haven’t been there in a long time.”

“Well, there’s this great paved path that goes up and down over hills and everything. It used to be a road to a missile site, and it’s really wide— people can walk three or four abreast. Anyway, people walk their dogs up there and some people bicycle. That’s what the problem was.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, to make a long story short, you’re supposed to keep your dogs on their leashes, right? You know how that is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, Jason didn’t. Max was this really hyper dog, and he said it was because Max never got to run and who cared anyway? So he let him off the leash and a rabbit or something hopped across the road, and Max just took off. We kept calling him, but he wouldn’t come back, he was just way too excited— there were other dogs around and everything. Well, anyway, there was this man on a bicycle with a little infant seat on the back. You know those things? You’ve got to remember this was a long time ago— I don’t even know if they made those little helmets then. But anyway this kid wasn’t wearing one.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know how it could have happened. Max just wasn’t paying attention, and he crashed into the bike. The father…”

His face turned into a tragedy mask as he remembered. “You should have seen the look of panic on that father’s face. I thought he was going to turn himself inside out to keep the bike upright. But it went down, and I swear to God I’ll never forget the noise it made as long as I live, when Sean hit the pavement. When his head hit.”

“Sean was the baby?”

“Yeah. That was his name.”

The horror of it flooded in on me. I imagined what it was like to be fourteen and see something like that and to know that your big brother was responsible— that
you
were— because there was no way at that age you could ever convince yourself it wasn’t your fault. It was your brother, it was your dog; it must be your fault.

“He was killed?” I said, making it more a statement than a question.

“Oh, no. Oh God, if only he’d been killed. He was horribly brain-damaged and lived nearly eighteen years, more or less as a vegetable. But a walking vegetable— one who had seizures all the time. He could only say a few words, and couldn’t take things in, couldn’t learn, but he could walk, sort of. If you could call it that. He was all crippled and spastic. He had to wear diapers, which somebody had to change. And you just never knew when he was going to fall over with a seizure. Oh God, it was horrible.” He tossed back the rest of his drink. I could understand the need to anesthetize himself; I was feeling pretty raw just hearing about it, not having to see it again in my mind’s eye, to hear that awful noise.

He held up his empty glass, but Maurizio didn’t offer another. “Sean Dunson died eight months ago at the age of eighteen— exactly the age Jason was when it happened. And that was horrible, too. I know every goddam detail. He had a little virus, and his temperature went way up, which caused a series—
series,
please— of uncontrolled seizures. Somehow in the midst of all that, he ‘aspirated,’ as the doctors say, and got pneumonia, which killed him. About eighteen years too late to save the Dunsons and the McKendricks.”

He sat in bleakness, his head down, and his hands, wrapped around the glass, between his legs. “His parents seemed decent enough, I think. I don’t really know, I was just a little kid. But I think they finally sued, and the suit didn’t come to anything— our parents didn’t really have any money; they gave them what they did have, which was Jason’s college money. He went two years to a community college; that was all. The rest of us— Tres and I— didn’t go at all, and everything was just … sad. After that. I don’t remember ever being happy again, ever laughing in that house, ever even having a Christmas tree.

“Tressa started wearing all black as soon as she got to junior high, and Mom and Dad kind of…” He paused, trying, I thought, to figure out exactly what had happened to them. “They just gave up, I guess. Dad was an accountant but not a very successful one. Sometimes Mom would get a job in a bookstore. They’d worked really, really hard just to get through, and they never had extra money again. If they had money for Tres and me— for college— I guess they felt they had to give it to the Dunsons. I don’t know for sure; I just know they were never the same again.”

“And Jason?”

“I don’t know. He never would say. He always seemed so upbeat, like he had everything under control, but I don’t think he ever even began to get over it. For one thing, he got more distant, too— not like Tressa, who just checked out— but, I don’t know, it was like none of us had much to say to each other after that. Like the shame of it was some big tent that collapsed on us and got us all tangled up, so we couldn’t move anymore. Like if we looked at each other, we’d see Max crashing into that bike or something; we’d remember it. I think Jason gave the Dunsons money sometimes, but I’m not sure. We never talked about that.” He looked away. “Do you know how much it costs to take care of somebody like that? It’s a black hole that sucks your money into it.”

The name Dunson was starting to ring a bell. I said, “Did you meet them? The Dunsons?”

“Oh God, yes. There were endless negotiations. And Mom was always trying to be nice— going to see Sean and everything. I went with her once or twice.”

“Were there any other kids?”

“A little girl. I guess she was about five at the time.”

“Adrienne? Was that her name?”

“How did you know about her?”

“She was Jason’s assistant. You didn’t know that?”

“How would I know that?” He sounded angry. “Maurizio, please?” He held up his glass again.

Maurizio took it, filled it, and looked at me apologetically. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “I don’t think Michael better drive.”

I said to Michael, “Was that the whole family? Just the parents and Adrienne?”

He nodded.

“Adrienne came with her dad to Jason’s wake. I thought you’d like to know that.”

“Tres and Jason went to Sean’s funeral a few months ago. The Dunsons and the McKendricks. Just one big happy family.” He drank, and then he said, “I wonder why Mrs. Dunson wasn’t there.”

“I guess I have more bad news for you. She committed suicide about six months ago. It must have been after Sean died.”

His eyes seemed to sink deeper, so that he looked more miserable than ever. “Jason never told me. That was the way he was, he never talked about anything that worried him. But, man, he couldn’t keep quiet about Sean’s funeral. He was, like,
wrecked
by it. He said she was real thin— Mrs. Dunson. Real fragile-looking, shoulders shaking the whole time. He knew her before, knew what she looked like, I mean. He said it was like seeing a ghost.”

Back at the other end, Chris met me at the airport. I wasted no time: “I have news. Lots of it and all concerning Adrienne. Has she turned up yet?”

“Afraid not.”

“She’s scary as hell, Chris. The thing she had with McKendrick— you’re not going to believe how sick it was. Sick and manipulative.” I told her the story Michael had told.

“Adrienne had this incredible power over him,” she said. “I guess he felt so guilty he’d do anything she wanted. ‘Hire me.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Let me move in.’ ‘No problem.’ And who knows what else? Maybe he gave her money, too.”

“Michael thinks he gave some to the Dunsons. It would certainly explain his vow of poverty.”