Brooklyn Bones (19 page)
My kitchen was reassuringly full of large men at work but I only waved and retreated upstairs to my room, so I could try think things through in private.
I wanted to tell someone what I had learned, talk it over, try to get a handle on it all. I could call that detective, Simms, but she must know all about it if these men worked for her. And probably she would not be inclined to talk it over with me.
I could call dad. Did he know Wanda? I bet he did. That didn’t mean I actually wanted to talk to him. And what if I did, and told him everything? Middle-aged and out of shape as he was, he still thought of himself as a tough product of Brooklyn’s tough streets. He might get on a plane, cast and all, and come home to protect me. I shuddered at the thought.
And yet, at this point in my life, I could understand why he would. There is no such thing as being an overprotective parent. Well, of course there is. I stopped walking my daughter to school a long time ago, only about a year after she begged me to, but yes, my overriding thought right now was that I was glad she was away, distant and protected from all of this.
I called Detective Simms, as I had known all along I would have to.
I tried to convince her that I had a right to know more.
“And why is that?” Her voice dripped icicles.
“Because. Because he has no family to speak of, and I am the closest to that he had. He left me everything. I owe it to him to…”
“To what? Supervise us? I’m sorry, but it does not work like that.” She didn’t sound at all sorry. “We are busy investigating a murder. That’s our job. We are good at it. Even if you were his daughter or his wife we would not discuss our progress with you.”
“But I….”
“See that you don’t get in the way.” She hung up.
I had learned precisely nothing from her. I felt as if I were standing in front of a large wall, high and thick, with no gates. Whatever strange turns Rick’s life might have taken, I would not be able to untangle them on my own. They had become far too strange for my abilities. And far too scary.
My reason for even trying—at least the one I could use as a reason—was that I needed to know who he really was to write that eulogy. The truth is that I needed to keep in my memory the Rick I knew. I could not lose him a second time.
I might not have official answers for many months. Maybe I would never have the answers. That was a bleak prospect. Maybe the NYPD would never tell me everything. Maybe they would never know themselves. I had grown up around cops in my neighborhood, Rick, some of dad’s old friends. I knew that always solving cases was television, not real life.
I knew what Darcy would say to me, if she were not off on vacation. Stick to the everyday. Go have a brownie. Take a bubble bath. Go for a run.
Deep down, I knew I needed to let the pros look for the answers for now. Detective Simms was right, I admitted to myself with great resentment. It was their job, and they knew how to do it better than I did. The same voice said that forcing my attention back to everyday life for a while was not abandoning Rick. It was sanity. It did not mean I was done asking questions.
I would anchor myself by diving into the everyday. Trying to focus on the most everyday thing I could think of, I went downstairs to look at the work in the kitchen. Today there were plumbers connecting my new appliances. They were two strapping young men who spoke pure Brooklyn, in contrast to the Mexican carpenters, the Polish electrician, and Joe’s secretary, whose English had a Dublin lilt. They told me I’d have an icemaker by evening and the stove could be used for dinner. My one good piece of news for the day. Of course I had no counter tops to use for workspace yet and no cabinets to store groceries.
I reminded myself that I had things to do, productive things. I had a project to work on or risk losing course credit. I had a stack of files from Brendan Leary. He had surprised me by mailing a fat envelope of photocopies with no notes or explanation. And I had not done anything with the Pastores’ pictures, which might be useful and fun as part of my exhibit. I had not even put my notes from library research into anything like a plan. I wrote on my list: memo for my boss with progress by end of today.
It would be a note, outlining what I was doing and what I had found. Oh, yes, and maybe some ideas about what we could do with it all, to let him know I was actually thinking about what I was discovering.
When Leary’s package had come I had called him to ask about it. In fact I had called him twice, but he’d never returned the calls and I had barely noticed. I was too busy and distracted then. Now I began working my way through the files.
He was a good writer and a good reporter too. He covered landlord/tenant issues, as I already knew, and here were his detailed notes, all the additional information that didn’t make it into a story. There was a whole folder on the Rogow scandal, with a take on it quite different from old Mrs. Rogow’s, of course. There were stories on the changing demographics of the neighborhood, the first conversion of a brownstone from a rooming house back to a private home, the hopeful energy of newcomers and the discomfort and fear of old-timers. He had an uncanny ability to tap into major shifts just as they were beginning. All this in a neighborhood weekly. No wonder he soon moved on to a major paper.
I selected article after article that we could use to illustrate points we might want to make, tabbed them with bright Post-Its for later copying, and began a computer document outlining what I had and how we could use it. I was moving in the right direction.
At last I had worked my way down to the bottom, a mystery folder with none of his usual careful labeling. On top there was a barely legible note saying, “Here’s one more file. Who knows why I kept this—I keep everything—but I think you’ll find it interesting.”
It was filled with blurry, yellowing photocopies. There were dates stamped on top. When the copies were made? When they were added to Leary’s files? All of them were about thirty years ago, give or take.
No notes. No explanations. That certainly seemed like Leary. He knew what it all meant and he didn’t feel obligated to tell me. I would have to figure out what they were and why they mattered, so I started reading.
I stopped when I found myself completely confused. They were a jumble of dates and different handwritings. I tried to group the same handwritings together, and then sorted again by date wherever I could. I began again.
Dear Mom and Dad
I’m sorry but I’ll die if I stay in this town one more minute. I know there’s real life somewhere else. I guess you’ll be upset but please don’t worry. This is so you know I left on my own and haven’t been kidnapped or anything. Please feed Fluffy for me and pet her sometimes. She will miss me.”
Written in a round, careful teenager’s penmanship, with XXX’s for kisses and OOO’s for hugs.
The next page, in a hasty-looking, pencil scrawl, said simply,
“I’m outta this hick nowheresville forever. Don’t look for me.”
One in purple ink, said,
“Kids are mean here. I’m with Jason. They’re mean to him too. We’re looking for someplace nicer. We’ll watch out for each other
.” The next, printed in block letters, said only. “
Done with being smacked around. Go to hell.”
How had Leary ever come to have these? And why were they in such a mess, unlike his usual meticulous filing?
I worked my way through a few more. My eyes began to sting and my heartbeat seemed to speed up as I read the ones with headings that said, “mom and dad” or “mommy” or “Grandma” or “sis.” What if I came down one morning and found a note like this on my kitchen table?
I took a deep, shaky breath and kept reading. Some seemed to be diary pages, all telling similar stories of hometown unhappiness and the compulsion to be anywhere but here. I had a pretty good idea of what they must have found elsewhere. I hoped some of them found their way home.
This file was all about lost children. Who were they? Why did Leary have these notes? And what was he trying to tell me? He had a whole lot of explaining to do. It was time to try again, but I only got his grumpy message on his answering machine. This time I left a grumpy message back.
After awhile I saw that there were a few with the same rounded handwriting and hearts dotting the i’s. Not runaway notes but a runaway’s correspondence? Blocky messages, photocopied from post cards?
Dear mommy
Please don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m not where I mailed this, you’d come looking I know it, but it’s a good place. People are really friendly.
Love, me
Dear mommy
I have a place to stay, I know you are wondering, and yes I’m eating enough too. Stopped taking my vitamins, too expensive. Sorry.
Hi to daddy. Don’t worry.
And in the same hand, a note on paper decorated with a kitten:
Hi, Debbie
How’s everything in high school? I’m done with that shit. Met some kids who are starting a band (you bet, interesting substances around, as I know you are wondering), and they live together like a commune. Does that just blow your mind, your little hick friend in a commune? Picture this—it’s not like a movie with tall buildings, it’s a funny, falling down house with lots of stairs, and most of the rooms are painted PURPLE. With swirly glow—in—the dark designs. Too beautiful and strange. I stay with them and clean up instead of paying rent. Think of me when you’re waving those pom-poms. Ha-ha.
Love from your sis in crime.
On another kitten page:
Dear mom and dad
Getting cold here. Could use some of my winter clothes. I’m in New York, but don’t try to find me. You won’t be able to, and you’d hate it, it’s a big, busy place, not much like home. That’s why I like it. Send my stuff to GPO-Times Square. Having so much fun and my eyes are opening up to the whole magic of the universe. Love, me
There was a sketched yin/yang symbol next to her signature, and no more hearts in the text.
I saw that the handwriting was changing, too, wandering across the page, shaky and sloppy. Was she really having so much fun? Was she really eating well? I imagined her growing thin and waif-like, her eyes wide with the visions her new life was giving.
I could not bear to look at this sad material any longer. This was supposed to distract me from obsessing about Rick, but it had only substituted a different heartache. I needed to stop, right then and there.
I needed lunch too, but before that I needed something else. I called camp, reaching out to my own child. I wasn’t worried about her. This was for me.
The camp secretary said she had seen Chris leaving the dining room, chattering away in a gang of girls. Did I want her pulled out of oil-painting class to talk to me? They normally did not allow that, but the director had put Chris on a list of exceptions. No, I said, that’s fine. I said it wasn’t important enough to alarm her. And it wasn’t.
It wasn’t as comforting as hearing her voice, but I could picture Chris in a smock covered with smears of paint, concentrating fiercely on her work in class, or giggling with Mel and other friends. Their faces were a blur, because I did not know them, but I could imagine their voices, and I was comforted.
I headed out to the nearest coffee shop and took the Pastores’ albums along for lunchtime company. I had talked to the Pastores because I still I had some vague ideas about clues to the mystery in my own house, but the albums of unsophisticated snap shots turned out to be a time machine, bringing me a time and a place with touching immediacy. Someone in the family must have loved that simple camera.
Here was the older Mr. Pastore, Uncle Sal, stopped at work and posing with a smile. In a series of pictures, he seemed to be updating the house, covering the pressed tin ceilings with 1970s-modern dropped ceiling acoustic tile, re-facing the wood kitchen cabinets with Formica, laying wall-to-wall carpeting over the parquet floors. I flinched at the aesthetic choices, but could not miss how proud he looked.
Here were holidays, like the Christmas pictures Mrs. Pastore had shown me. Easter with lilies on the table, Thanksgiving with turkey and lasagna, and lots of people squeezed around the table. Older men and little boys in suits and ties, women in prim dresses covered with frilly aprons, little girls in crinolines and hair bows, teenage girls in tiny miniskirts and heavy mascara, with crosses around their necks.
Here were block parties, too. One of them had a tiny carousel and another had pony rides. And here was my house on a few occasions, with a group of intensely scruffy young people sitting on the steps. Masses of hair obscured faces, both male and female. T-shirts and cut off jeans. Bare feet. Perhaps they were not scruffy, they were being fashionable.
I was attaching tabs to page after page. This was a living block preserved in amber at a moment in time. I started to imagine a display with questions: what does this tell you?
I went back to the pages Mrs. Pastore had shown me first, the party for cousin Marco’s return from Viet Nam. First, there were pre-party pictures: a careful photo of the refreshment table, with its carved watermelon cornucopia spilling fruit salad out on onto a tray; the Virgin Mary shrine in the corner, with a bouquet of flowers in front of it; the grape arbor festooned with balloons.
