Butchers Hill (22 page)

"Spectacular Bid, Sunday
Silence," Jackie read from the side of the glass.
"You know, I've never even been to a horse
race."

"It's fun, as long as
you keep it in perspective." This batch of juleps was syrupy,
and served over so much cracked ice that it was like a snowball with an
alcohol kicker. "You can't go to the track
expecting to win, not unless you're willing to do the time to
become a real handicapper. I got lucky my first few times out, hit an
exacta and a dollar triple, total beginner's luck. Then I got
cocky and thought I could make real picks, began trying to calculate
speed figures and use the past performance charts in the Racing Form. I
lost every time. Now when I go, I think of it as an interactive
entertainment, like a play in which I have a vested interest in the
outcome."

"A kind of performance
art."

"Exactly. I make goofy bets, but
educated goofy bets. If it's not too crowded at the betting
windows, I like to watch the post parade, pick out the horse who looks
like he's ready to run a good race."

"How can you tell a winner, just
by looking?"

"Well, as I said,
nothing's foolproof. But I like the ones whose ears are
straight up, and look kind of prancey. My favorite race of all is the
very last one on Preakness Day."

"Isn't that the
Preakness?"

"Uh-uh. Preakness is the
penultimate race. The last race is just a little stakes race, no big
deal. Half the paid attendance has already left. But I've
always had good luck at that race. Hit an exacta there just this
year."

"I thought you said the exacta was
a sucker's bet."

"It is."

Jackie actually smiled, although she tried
to hide it behind the rim of her glass.

"So you
do
have a sense of humor."

"Who said I
didn't?"

"You don't laugh at most
of my jokes."

"Did it ever occur to you that
most of your jokes aren't very funny?"

Tess pretended to clutch her heart.
"What perfidy."

"Truthfully, it's good
to hear you cutting up the way you usually do. You seemed a little
distracted this evening. Is everything all right? What was the deal
with that guy who wanted to see you this morning?"

"I've had
some…unexpected developments on another case."

Jackie hesitated, then said as if reciting a
phrase from a foreign language handbook: "Do you want to talk
about it?"

"It wouldn't be ethical.
You wouldn't want me chatting about your case with another
client, right? Besides, if the cops do come after me, I can't
maintain I'm entitled to client-attorney privilege if
I've been blabbing about the case all over town."

"Could that really
happen?"

"It's
possible."

"Could it happen any time
soon?"

Tess had to laugh at Jackie's
worried face. "Don't worry, Miss Weir.
I'll be here tomorrow night, ready to continue the survey of
Johnson-Johnstons of North Baltimore County."

She signaled the bartender for another
round, but Jackie covered the rim of her glass. "I have too
long a drive home."

"Not me," Tess said.
"Did you know James M. Cain had a snowball machine and used
it to make mint juleps? I bet they weren't half as good as
these, though."

Some people she knew could have talked about
that single detail for hours. But Jackie's imagination
wasn't engaged by long-dead writers, not even ones who knew
the secrets of every hash house waitress and insurance man.

"You always want more,
don't you?"

"Huh?"

"I was thinking of that photo back
in your office. More juleps, more rides on the flying rabbit, more
chocolate malts."

"I did love malted milkshakes. I
always asked for an extra teaspoon of malt. Poppa would give it to me,
Gramma wouldn't." Suddenly, the second julep
didn't seem so delicious. Second helpings never did.
"Gee, isn't it shocking that I developed an eating
disorder, what with one grandparent urging all those treats on me, and
the other one always trying to take them away?"

"An eating disorder. Now
that's real white-girl craziness. Anorexia?"

"No, just a little garden-variety
bulimia. An occasional binge, followed by an occasional purge with the
help of Ipecac. Exercise was my coping mechanism. I was running ten
miles a day when I was in high school, doing endless sit-ups in my
room. By the time my parents finally figured out I wasn't
even on the track team, I had shin splints like you wouldn't
believe."

"Then you just stopped?"

Tess was thinking about the food they had
left in her office. She had eaten quite a bit, yet there was still so
much left. They had wrapped it up and put it in the refrigerator,
except for the pad thai, which Jackie would take home. There was a time
when even that would have been too risky. She would have thrown it
away, or forced Jackie to take it. She wouldn't have trusted
herself to behave responsibly around so much food.

"Overeating is like alcoholism,
except that you don't have the option of going cold turkey.
Everyone has to eat, right? On top of that, I have to exercise, because
I'm addicted to the endorphin rush. I just brought both
activities into almost-normal limits. I started rowing, which
isn't as hard on the knees, and I alternate my runs with
weight workouts. I also resigned myself to life as a mesomorph. Women
think I should lose ten pounds, men think I'm fine the way I
am." She grinned. "That's better than the
obverse, isn't it? Unless, of course, you're a
regular customer here."

"You look fine. As I said before,
white girl craziness."

"Really? Then why did you get so
upset when Willa Mott kept saying you were fat?"

Jackie made a face, as if repelled. It
wasn't clear if the face was intended for Willa Mott, or the
girl she used to be. "When I got pregnant, I spent the first
four months eating like crazy, thinking no one would notice I was
carrying a baby, they'd just think I was fat. It
wasn't the most inspired plan, I admit. By the time I
accepted what was going on, there was nothing to do but carry the
pregnancy to term."

"You look so different
now." Tess was seeing the photograph again, the shapeless
girl with the flash of camera caught in her myopic eyes.

"Not so different."

"You do. It's not just
the weight. It's the glasses—"

"I wear contact lenses now.
You've heard of them?"

"And the hair—those two
little tails sticking straight out from your head, the ends looking as
if someone chewed on them."

"Hey, not everyone can wear the
same hairstyle for their entire life. As I said before, you
haven't changed much. You have one of those faces that will
never change. When you're fifty, people will be able to match
you to that photograph. Is that something in the genes, you suppose,
having a face that never changes?"

"I've never thought
about it much, but I guess it is, at least on my mother's
side. The Monaghans start out with these round little marshmallow faces
that get sharper and frecklier every year. Not too long ago, I was
walking downtown and someone I went to fourth grade with recognized me
and said, ‘You haven't changed a bit.' I
wasn't exactly flattered."

"You should be," Jackie
said fervently. "To have that kind of continuity in your
life, to have people know you that way—that's a
wonderful thing."

"An interesting observation from a
woman who changed her name, ran away from her family, and did
everything she could, short of going to a plastic surgeon, to alter her
appearance."

Jackie said nothing, just played with her
empty glass, running her fingers over the painted surface.

"Ready to go?"

"Absolutely."

Outside, the night air was muggy, as if a
storm might be near. Tess and Jackie were moving slowly up Collington
Street, when a skeletal woman pushing a baby carriage approached them.
Although the woman looked as if she hadn't eaten in weeks,
the sleeping baby was pink-cheeked and healthy looking.

"Ladies, ladies, do you have any
spare change tonight, ladies? My baby needs a prescription, and the
food stamps are late this month, and the doctor says I have to start on
this new medication, and my husband, he just wrote from Georgia that he
can't find work—"

Jackie started to reach inside her purse,
but Tess laid a hand gently on her wrist.

"We're down to living on
plastic until our next pay day," she told the woman, politely
but firmly. "Sorry."

The woman looked at them resentfully,
muttered something under her breath, and pushed the stroller forward,
accosting a group of people gathered on a stoop several houses down.

"She had a baby," Jackie
said. "She's not some druggie or alcoholic trying
to get money for a fix."

"It's not her baby and
that's exactly what she is."

"How do you know that?"

"She's famous in the
neighborhood. You see, she kept coming back. Some people tried to help
her, get her a place to live. They found out that she volunteers to
babysit when she's hard up, then wheels the baby around,
using him as a prop to get more contributions. One of the
Blight
's
columnists wrote about her. The details give her away. Lies demand
details, lots of them. People pay her to shut up as much as anything.
She's one of the women who walk."

"Who?"

"The women who walk, the lost
souls of Baltimore, the ones who talk to themselves and wander through
the city. I see them on buses, down in the harbor, even up at the
Rotunda shopping center. Some of them panhandle, some don't.
Not that long ago, I used to worry I was going to become one of
them."

"Bullshit," Jackie said
softly.

"What?"

"I said
bullshit
.
You were never really in danger of falling through the cracks like
that. You have parents, family. There was always someone to catch you
if you really fell."

Tess wanted to argue, but Jackie was right,
she had caught her in her lie as surely as she had caught the woman
with the stroller. Oh, she might have felt as if she were scraping
bottom at times, but there had always been family to help her out. When
she had lost her job, Aunt Kitty and Uncle Donald had rallied, finding
work for her. And if she hadn't been so proud, her father
would have squeezed her on the city payroll somehow.

"You're right, I was
being glib. I always had support. I guess you really
didn't."

"I had one person. Now I
don't have anyone. I'm all I have."

Tess wanted to contradict her, say something
soothing, but what was there to say in all honesty? Her mother was
dead, her daughter was someone else's daughter. Jackie Weir
was about as alone as anyone could be in this world.

T
ess
yearned to go straight to Tyner's office the next morning,
but it was her turn to take Gramma Weinstein to the hairdresser, one of
Gramma's many codependent rituals. Unlike some older folks,
who clung to the steering wheel long past the point of prudence, Gramma
had announced on her sixtieth birthday that she would not drive any
more. She had taken it for granted that her husband and, after his
death, her children and grandchildren, would gladly pick up the
chauffeuring duties.

But the rotation, as maintained by Gramma,
was far from foolproof. Today, as Tess pulled into the parking lot
behind Gramma's apartment building, she saw her mother
getting out of her blue Saturn.

"Free at last," she said
to herself. Now she could check in with Tyner, find out where things
stood with Beale. But something in her mother's face kept her
from throwing her car into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot.
The tense lines on either side of her mouth, the anxious look in her
eyes. She reminded Tess of herself, on her way to visit Judith.

"Hey, Mom. Looks like Gramma
double-scheduled again. I thought it was my turn."

"Great. I had to take a personal
day to get the morning off. Unlike you, I can't make my own
hours. The federal government isn't quite so
flexible."

"Nor is the state government, yet
here comes Uncle Donald. Triple-teaming—that's a
new one even for Gramma. Is she getting senile, or does she just not
care what else we do with our lives?"

"Don't be disrespectful
of your grandmother," Judith said automatically.
"She won't be with us much longer."

"
You
wish," Tess said, and her mother looked stricken.
By
the joke, or the reality behind it
? Impossible
to tell.

Uncle Donald strolled up, whistling a show
tune, "Younger Than Springtime." He was
Gramma's favorite, if only because he had never married and
his loyalties were clear. Even his fall from political grace, in the
scandal that had sent his senator boss to prison, hadn't
shaken Gramma's affection for him.

"Good morning, Sis, Tesser. How do
you want to resolve this? We can toss a coin, or cut a deck of cards
that I happen to have in my car. High card wins. Loser takes her to the
Beauty Palace."

"I'll do it,"
Judith said. "I took the day off, I might as well."

A reprieve, Tess thought. Yet when she
looked at her mother's dutiful, unhappy face, she
couldn't just walk away.

"Let's all go. Make it a
family outing. My mom and my favorite uncle. And Gramma," she
added, when Judith gave her another look. "We could go to
S'n'H afterwards, like we used to do with
Poppa."

"Why not?" Uncle Donald
replied.

"Why not?" Judith echoed
weakly, but she looked as if she might have several reasons.

The Pikesville Beauty Palace sat in an old
shopping center on Reisterstown Road, near the synagogues that had been
built as Baltimore's Jewish families began moving to the
north and west. Although the neighborhood was less and less safe as
time went on, the Beauty Palace had scores of loyal customers like
Gramma, who wouldn't dream of going anywhere else for their
weekly sets and periodic root touchups.