Ask Again, Yes (40 page)

Kate thought about how old Anne had gotten, and wondered how she and Peter looked to Anne. Peter’s hair had gone gray at his temples. Kate had been coloring hers for years. She had lines on her chest that used to fade by the time she brushed her teeth each morning but now were still there at lunchtime. Peter had deep grooves radiating out from the corners of his eyes. But they only noticed these things because they were still young and the changes were new to them. They’d be young for a few more years. Anne was so thin that the tunic blouse she was wearing kept sliding off toward one shoulder. Her clavicles looked like the handlebars of Molly’s bike. She shifted in the chair she’d chosen, as if she had pain in her hips.

They were still in the living room when they heard George’s voice, and Kate looked to the window to find him giving out Popsicles he’d transported in a cooler all the way from Sunnyside. He’d brought enough for the kids next door, for any kid who might show up.

Anne sat up tall and gripped her bony knees.

“Did Peter tell you George was coming?” Kate asked lightly. But when would he have told her?

“Anne FitzGerald,” George boomed when he came in.

Anne stood up to greet him. “Hello, George,” she said, and took a frightened step back as he rushed her, pulled her into a hug. And then, “You sound just the same as Brian. Your voice. For a second I thought . . .”

“That guy?” George said. “How can you even remember?” He greeted Kate as he always did, by hugging her tight and lifting her off her feet. He hugged Peter, too, as if he hadn’t seen them only a few weeks before. Then, from deep inside a canvas bag, he pulled out a carefully wrapped bowl of fruit salad, a paper bag of rolls he picked up from a bakery in Queens. Kate could see that he’d decided to play it like a normal get-together, as if they did this once a month, all past grievances wiped from the memory board. “I’m starving.”

One by one they made a single-file line through the house and out to the patio, where Kate had already wiped down the chairs and moved them under the shade of the umbrella.

Anne sipped her water, but felt so overwhelmed that she had to hold it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing it. She resented the fact that they’d included George, but now that he was there, it felt urgent that she tell him something. Silently, she practiced what she’d say and considered when she’d say it. Alone would be best, just the two of them. The kids would be upon them soon. Kate was slicing apples. Peter was opening a package of hot dogs and lining them up on the grill grate. My God, he was handsome. He was broader than Brian had been, more like Anne’s own father, whose face she wouldn’t have been able to recall until she recognized it in Peter’s. And he was drunk. She could see it in the big movements he made when he reached for a knife to slice open the plastic packaging. She could see it in the way he planted his legs wide. But he was good at it, well practiced. She never would have known if she hadn’t been looking. He kept up with conversation, added his two cents. George plopped down in the seat beside Anne’s but jumped right up again when the plastic burned the bare skin below his shorts. He grabbed a beach towel that had been thrown on the grass and folded it up under him.

“Almost burned my arse off,” George said to no one in particular.

Anne wondered if George could see what was happening to Peter. But one wrong subject, one wrong comment, and they’d slide right back down to the place where they began. She shouldn’t have said Francis Gleeson’s name. Another slip and Kate would decide she didn’t need her help after all. Another slip like that and she’d be heading back up the thruway to her little studio that seemed so much emptier now. She’d returned home after that middle-of-the-night conversation with Kate and seen it for what it had always been—a place she was meant to stay for just a little while, not a home. But even as she coached herself to stay to safe subjects and to think hard before she spoke, she felt her urgency grow stronger.

“I want to thank you,” she said without looking at George. He’d untucked his shirt and now there was a ring of sweat circling his belly. “For everything you did for Peter.”

Peter turned from the grill. Kate looked up from the cutting board.

“It was an extraordinary thing you did, taking him in like that. I am very grateful to you.” Anne’s voice caught and cracked.

There, she said it, and right away she felt dizzy with the weight that had been lifted. Therapist after therapist had promised her that one day, when the time was right, this might be a thing that would be good to say, for herself as much as for anyone else, but she’d never really believed it until he walked through the door that afternoon. Until that hour, she never thought she’d have the chance. “We repeat what we don’t repair,” Dr. Abbasi had said to her once, and for so many years she’d taken the limited interpretation of that as pertaining only to herself, and figured she was safe since she’d have little chance to repeat her worst errors anyway, having no family left, no one to abandon and no one to drive away. But from the moment Kate’s face appeared at her car window that night, she wondered if all that time she’d misunderstood the warning. That the “We” in the doctor’s aphorism (one, admittedly, she’d rolled her eyes at when it was first delivered to her) was larger. “We” could include
Peter, could include his children, all the people connected to Anne by invisible thread.

George nodded once, quickly, caught completely off guard.

“It was my pleasure,” he said after a moment, and then cleared his throat into his meaty hand.

They didn’t talk about Gillam, or Kate’s parents, or speculate as to what golf course Brian might be standing on at that moment. They talked about the food, and the oppressive heat, and how kids don’t seem to feel weather the way adults do. Gently, in a roundabout way, George asked where Anne lived now, and when she told him, he asked whether she liked Saratoga. He said he’d been there a few times to see the races, but not for many, many years.

“I was in a hospital in Albany for several years,” she said, as if they didn’t already know. “So I was already in the general area.” Peter wondered if she even remembered that he’d tried to see her that time.

“You heading all the way back up there tonight?” George asked.

Kate and Peter exchanged panicked glances. If she were any other guest, this would be the moment to invite her to stay. But Anne said no, she’d struck a deal at the motor lodge on Jericho Turnpike to stay for a little while.

“Oh,” Kate said, and carefully set down the platter she was holding. “How long is a little while?”

“A week or two, maybe.”

“Didn’t you say you have a job upstate?” Kate asked. “An apartment?”

“Kate,” Peter said.

“I took some time off. I had vacation days saved up.” She didn’t tell them that she’d never once taken a vacation day before.

Peter could see that Kate was thinking carefully about how to say whatever was coming next. So he spoke first.

“That sounds nice. Time off is good.” He signaled Kate to say they’d discuss it later.

This is my fault, Kate thought. I invited her here. How could I have believed she’d see him just once and be on her way? But then she watched Anne cross the patio to the cooler of waters, settle into the seat beside Peter. She was an old woman now. Frail. Bent. Nervous around her son and his family.

“Here,” Kate said, getting up to get her a pillow. The chair she’d chosen beside Peter was the least comfortable.

“Thanks,” Anne said, and as Kate watched her tuck it behind her, she thought, She has no power over us.

Anne stayed until the mosquitoes came out and the kids paraded down in their pj’s, their breath minty sweet. One by one they went around the patio, throwing their arms around George, then Peter, then Kate, and then Anne. “Good night,” they said, and by turns the boy and the girl pressed their hot faces to hers. Molly extended her hand for an extra shake and wished Anne a nice trip back to wherever she’d come from.

“Molly!” Peter admonished.

Immediately, Anne liked the girl best.

Peter, getting up to light the citronella torches, thought, I can’t expect it to be like this if we see her again. I can’t assume she’s always like this now. I’ll take today and enjoy it—so far, so good—but I won’t hope for more. She’s interested today but maybe won’t be tomorrow. He wondered if after all that time she was disappointed when she saw him again. She used to lie on his bed and name all the cities she wanted to visit with him. San Francisco. Shanghai. Brussels. Mumbai. But he’d never seen those places and neither had she. If they unfolded and unfolded the largest map they could find, where he started and where he ended up would be two small dots on that map, side by side.

nineteen

B
ENNY COULD WAIT WITH
Peter up until the last moment, but when they called him, he’d have to go in the room alone. Benny went over once again the things they’d probably cover, and the best answers Peter could offer while not saying too much, but Peter was only half paying attention. That morning, twelve weeks after accidentally discharging his weapon, he’d sat on the edge of Kate’s side of the bed and told her she might be right, that he might have a problem, but if she could just bear with him for a little longer he was determined to get better. He told her he’d been thinking about it for a while, about a thing she’d said a few weeks back: that not all problems looked the same, but that didn’t mean they weren’t problems. The things she’d been saying to him, the warnings she’d been giving him, it was possible she was right. It was still possible she was wrong, but it was also possible she was right. Ever since his mother’s visit, he’d been trying to go up to bed earlier, and his latest trick was setting an alarm for midnight. The moment it went off he had to march himself upstairs. If he was holding a drink, he had to pour it down the sink. It had worked for a week, and then he kept pressing snooze, and then he just stopped setting it altogether. After
that, he made a rule that he could only drink beer, no liquor. That only lasted for three days.

The thing was, he’d promised himself the night before that he’d only have two drinks. But then he’d had another. Then another. It was like running too fast down a steep hill, his legs flying out in front of him. He could not stop. That surprised him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever tried before.

She’d looked up at him from her pillow, and for a second he thought she was going to say she was done, that it was too late.

But then she sat up and braced him by the shoulders. She tipped forward until her forehead touched his. “Thank God,” she said. “Let’s get through today, okay?” she said. “And then talk later? What time do you have to be there?”

The hearing was set to begin at nine sharp but at eight fifty-five the clerk came out and said they had to push it to ten. Bathrooms were down the hall. Vending machines were in the lobby.

Benny was going on about the pension hearing, the step after this one, if it turned out that they were going to force him to retire, whether it would be with disability.

“You think that’s what’ll happen?” Peter asked. “They might see this is all a big mistake and reinstate me at full duty.”

“Yeah, they could, they could,” Benny said. He’d never seen it happen, personally.

Waiting side by side with Benny on the most uncomfortable bench in five boroughs, Peter tried to think of the most damning things he’d said in therapy. Benny confirmed they’d have his psychologist’s notes in front of them, the conclusions he’d drawn. It didn’t seem legal. Benny agreed, but it was pointless to think about that because here they were. He wished Peter had told him that he’d signed away his privacy rights, he could have warned Peter to be more guarded during sessions, but
Peter hadn’t understood that they’d use those notes against him. He stood up and swore and tried to recollect what the psychologist’s admin had told him: that they were gathering longitudinal data for the department. Also, if he didn’t sign, his commanding officer told him, they’d consider taking his pension. He was a wreck before that first session and didn’t even remember reading the papers he’d signed. What could he do? Benny understood both sides. Since Peter was also a commanding officer, they had to protect the people who worked under him. What if it happened again but instead of firing into a cinderblock wall, Peter hit a person?

“Do you think the department could take the storm that would come? They have enough bad cops to deal with,” Benny said.

“I’m not a bad cop.”

“I know that, Peter. But I don’t think they’ll risk putting an unstable cop back on the job.”

Peter flinched. “I’m not unstable. They don’t really think that.”

“You know that’s just the language, Interim Order Number Nine. That’s part of the phrasing.” Benny seemed to think carefully about what he’d say next. “There’s just that one Command Discipline in your file. My sense is, internally, they think you’re smart as hell, but they believe you’re hiding something.”

Peter remembered once again what he’d said to Kate that morning, how he wished he could climb into bed beside her and stay there until he figured out how he’d gotten there, and how to get out.

“Pete, between us, I haven’t said a word to anyone about the favor you asked me to do at the hospital, but it’s possible they know about that, too. There were too many people in and out and I know at least one nurse overheard. Had you been drinking that day?”

What was considered that day? Kate had worked overnight in the lab, so she was at home. She’d set herself up at the kitchen table with a pile of textbooks and index cards filled out with different-colored Sharpies. The irony was he remembered thinking life was pretty good in that moment. The weather was perfect, the garage smelled like sawdust,
there was a game on the radio, he found a partial growler of IPA at the back of his beer fridge. He reported for duty at four. Technically, he had had a few drinks that day, but Benny should know as well as Peter did that time worked differently for people who work the midnight tour. Anytime Peter drove away from home and to the station house marked for him the end of one day and the beginning of the next. He left his house around three o’clock, and none of that happened until around nine o’clock at night. Agreeing that he’d been drinking that day would be implying something that wasn’t true.