Butchers Hill (9 page)

Yet Gramma still wanted to entertain on the
scale to which she had become accustomed when Poppa was alive. For
Judith's birthday dinner, she had invited all five of her
children, their spouses, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren.
It added up to twenty people, which would have made her apartment feel
like an overcrowded elevator, an elevator filled with tsotchkes and
china springer spaniels, each one with its own name and history.

Her children had handled the situation as
they always did, by going behind her back. Tess's mother,
Judith, called her four brothers and they agreed to draw straws for the
dinner. The losers attended, while the others made up credible excuses
for why they could not attend. Even Tess's own father ended
up wiggling off the hook, claiming a work conflict. The Monaghans and
the Weinsteins still didn't get along that well. So the guest
list was limited to Gramma, Uncle Jules and Aunt Sylvia, their daughter
Deborah and son-in-law Aaron, Uncle Donald, Uncle Spike, Tess and, of
course, the guest of honor, Judith, who had organized it all.

"Where is everybody?"
Gramma asked, as Judith sliced her birthday cake and passed pieces
around the table.

"Commitments," Judith
said. "People's lives are so hectic now."

"Well, Isaac and Nathan were
always so driven. That's why they're successful.
But I'd think your husband might have been here, at least.
Don't the Monaghans celebrate birthdays? God knows, they
celebrate everything else."

"Patrick's taking me to
the Inn at Perry Cabin this weekend." Judith broke off a
piece of cake with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth.
She'd
kill me if I did that
, Tess thought.

"A cabin? He takes you to a cabin
for your fiftieth birthday?"

"It's a five-star
restaurant and hotel, Gramma," Tess said, as her
mother's mouth was still full of cake.

"Very fancy, I'm sure. I
just can't understand why things can't be like they
used to be."

Tess could. It wasn't just the
loss of the house, although it had been a wonderful place for parties,
that overgrown Victorian perched on a hill above the Gwynn's
Falls, full of secret places, like an old dumbwaiter and the remains of
a wine cellar. No, it was the loss of Poppa that had changed the nature
of their family gatherings. Overworked and overextended, he had still
managed to throw his love at them with both hands, like a little kid
pushing up waves of water in a swimming pool. Gramma, in defiance of
every known stereotype about grandmothers Jewish or otherwise, had
served inedible food and begrudged them every mouthful. Unless one ate
too sparingly, in which case she was offended.

"Tessie, you're not
eating your cake," Gramma said now, watching Tess halve her
slice, then divide it again and again. It was hard to find a cake that
Tess didn't love, but Gramma always managed, serving a soggy
pineapple store brand with the consistency of frozen concentrate
straight from the can.

Judith gave her a warning look. As if Tess
needed to be reminded of the ground rules for this evening: No candor,
no simple truths, nothing that can be construed as an insult. Unless,
of course, you were Gramma.

"I'm so full after that
wonderful meal."

"Well, Judith can't open
her gifts until you finish your cake. Would anyone like another cup of
coffee? I'll make some."

"No!" Judith almost
shouted in her panic to keep her mother from committing yet another
culinary felony. "I mean, I'll make it, Mama. I
know where everything is."

"Does it look like Judith is
putting on weight?" Gramma asked after she had disappeared
behind the kitchen's swinging door. "Or is it that
dress?"

You should talk
,
Tess thought sourly, still breaking her cake into crumbs. Grandma
Weinstein was one of those older women who appeared to be all bosom
from shoulder to waist. Tess often wondered if this was the fate that
awaited her own body, no matter how much she lifted, ran, and rowed.
Every day, it seemed, the papers brought more proof that biology was
destiny, that genetics would get you in the end.

"You're certainly
looking
healthy
yourself
these days, Theresa Esther," Grandma said slyly. Tess
flinched. Her grandmother's euphemisms had a way of cutting
deeper than anyone else's insults. Needle, needle, needle. It
was like going to a bad acupuncturist.

"She's a beautiful
girl," said Uncle Donald, missing the subtext as usual.
Funny, in his days as a political fixer, he understood the meaning of
the tiniest gestures in Annapolis, could predict a bill's
fate by the way the speaker scratched his head. But he seemed to miss
all the nuances in his own family's interactions.
"When I walk down the street with Tess, I see the men
stealing looks at her, wondering how an old man like me got such a
gorgeous companion."

"Feh," said Gramma,
unimpressed. "A woman who puts stock in that kind of
attention is like a soup bone who thinks the dog has honorable
intentions. Nothing counts until you've got a ring on your
finger. Don't forget that, Tess."

Which was the only cue Aunt Sylvie needed:
"And when am I going to dance at your wedding,
Tesser?"

"When the Maryland General
Assembly outlaws the Electric Slide."

Deborah smiled at Tess over her
son's head, two-year-old Samuel, named for Poppa. Now
thirty-seven, Deborah had spent five years and an estimated fifty
thousand dollars to produce Samuel, insistent that her child have the
same DNA as his parents. As the Chinese say, be careful what you wish
for. Samuel was a miniature Aaron and Aaron, in Tess's
estimation, wasn't worth anywhere close to fifty thousand
dollars. Deborah might have done better shopping around for some sperm
that didn't come with that pale, beady-eye, no-lips gene.

"Oh, Mama, Tess is a career
woman," Deborah said. "I heard you opened your own
office down on Butchers Hill. How's business?"

"Great." The afternoon
couldn't have been worse. Tess and Esskay had canvassed
Beale's neighborhood, to see if anyone knew the whereabouts
of Destiny, Treasure, Salamon, and Eldon. It turned out almost everyone
knew who her client was and those who didn't assumed she was
a cop. Neither camp was inclined to help her beyond
"Hello," "Nope," and
"Good-bye." Oh, they had been polite enough; they
just wouldn't talk to her. She had never felt so
white
before. Until today, she had thought she was pretty good at inspiring
confidence in people, but her open countenance and ready smile
hadn't beguiled these folks. Not even Esskay, with her
ingratiating little snorts, had been able to break the ice.

"Aren't you nervous in
that neighborhood?"

"It's not so
bad."

"Really? Didn't I read
in the paper last week that a prostitute was found near the Patterson
Park pagoda, stabbed and beaten?"

Good old Deborah. She probably
couldn't name the current president of the United States, but
she had managed to find that one-paragraph item in the
Beacon-Light
.

"Was she black?" Gramma
asked.

"The paper didn't
say."

"It's not supposed
to," Tess said. "They don't put race in
unless it's relevant—"

"Black," Gramma decreed.
"Well, let them murder one another. She probably left behind
five children we'll all have to pay for." Everyone
looked at the ceiling, and Uncle Donald cleared his throat nervously,
but no one said anything.

Judith poked her head around the kitchen
door. "The coffee's ready. Raise your hand if you
want a cup."

"Theresa Esther, you lazy girl,
get in there and help your mother," Gramma said.
"It's her birthday, after all."

As with everything at Gramma's
house, there was a strict hierarchy to the gift ritual. Uncle Spike
always went first, as his actual relationship to the family remained
somewhat dubious. The Weinsteins suspected he was a Monaghan, the
Monaghans were sure he must be a Weinstein. He kept everyone guessing
by attending all events, even ones like this, where he wasn't
actually invited.

This year, he and Uncle Donald had gone in
together on Judith's present and when Tess passed the large,
heavy box to her mother, she had a sinking feeling. It felt like a
piece of electronic equipment. Uncle Spike, a bartender and a bookie,
tended to buy such things off the backs of trucks, while Uncle Donald
had been known to use his state government job to write awfully
creative procurement orders.

"One of those radio-CD
players," Judith said happily. "How did you know I
wanted one for the kitchen?"

"I've got my
spies," Uncle Donald said, winking at Tess. "Is it
okay? We can always…exchange it if it's not what
you want."

Uncle Spike looked up anxiously from his
second slice of pineapple cake. So he had been responsible for finding
this year's gift.

"No, no, it's exactly
right. Thank you, thank you both."

Uncle Jules came forward next, with a box
wrapped with the trademark yellow ribbon and green-and-yellow striped
paper of his jewelry store. Every Weinstein woman received one of these
boxes on her birthday. Always lovely, but not necessarily quite right
for the recipient. Tess had long suspected the pieces were estate items
Jules picked up on the cheap, or merchandise he couldn't
move. This small box held a pair of sterling silver combs set with
turquoise stones, the kind of thing Judith would never wear, although
Tess might. Trust Gramma to point that out.

"Jules, those are much too young
for Judith. What were you thinking? She's fifty now, after
all, getting up in years. Maybe Tessie could wear them,
they'd be nice with her eyes. Oh, I forgot. It's
Deborah who has the green eyes, yours are more grayish-blue,
aren't they, Tessie? Very nice in their own way,
though."

One more gift for Mom
to open and I am outta here
. Tess had presented
her gift in private, back at her parents' house. A set of
hand-hammered pewter measuring cups, with matching spoons. Judith had
seemed to like them, but it occurred to Tess now that her mother,
although quite accomplished, found no joy in cooking. As the only
daughter of a woman who seemed to revel in destroying food, she had
been forced into the kitchen at a young age and remained there by
default.

Gramma handed Judith an envelope. It was
always an envelope, always with a check for fifty dollars. That is, her
four sons and one daughter received fifty dollars, the grandchildren
were allotted twenty-five dollars at birthdays and Hanukah. Tess
assumed Judith and her brothers received larger checks because the
system was structured like war reparations. Those who had suffered the
longest received the most.

But instead of the familiar green check with
Gramma's spiky handwriting, Judith pulled out a photocopy
folded into quarters.

"What's this? It looks
like a land deed."

"My big surprise,"
Gramma said triumphantly. "I'm giving all my
children and grandchildren equal shares in that acreage that Samuel
left me in north county. It just happens to be part of the parcel where
they want to build a new shopping center. The deal should go through
later this summer. Poppa finally made a good investment, even if it did
take ten years after his death to pay off."

"I'm surprised he
didn't have to sell this when he filed for
bankruptcy," said Uncle Jules, putting on his reading glasses
to inspect the deed. After all, he would share in this windfall, too,
as would his Deborah.

"It was a personal investment,
held outside the corporation. Samuel wanted to build a house in the
country for when he retired. Who knew it would ever be worth anything,
so far out? But what was considered far doesn't seem so far
anymore, the way people are fleeing the city every day. I paid the
taxes and held onto it, and now our ship has come in. My lawyer says we
might get as much as two hundred thousand dollars for the land if we
play our cards right."

The deed moved around the table, from hand
to hand, until it was Tess's turn to study it. Five kids,
four grand-kids, two hundred thousand dollars—so this was a
chit, worth more than twenty-two thousand dollars. If they played their
cards right.

The Weinsteins had finally caught a break.
Lord knows they were due.
She
had caught a break. If the sale went through, she'd have a
nest egg, more than enough to float her through the lean times.

Good old Poppa. It was as if he had reached
out from beyond the grave and slipped a quarter in the slot, giving her
one more ride on the flying rabbit.

I
t
was commonly believed that the mayor of Baltimore awoke every morning
and turned southward, a huge smile on his face. No matter how poorly
his city was run, he could count on Washington, the nation's
capital, to be in even worse shape. Higher homicide rate, dumber
schools, bigger potholes and a convicted drug user at the helm, until
the city finally despaired and turned the whole mess over to a control
board. Yes, things could always be worse, the streets of Washington
seemed to sing, as Tess's car bumped and jolted its way to
the Nelsons' school on Capitol Hill.

The Benjamin Banneker Academy was a former
bank, a sandstone building with fortress-thick walls on a not-too-bad
block east of the Capitol. Although she knew the area fairly well, Tess
could never accustom herself to its checkerboard quality, where a block
of restored town-houses suddenly gave way to rowhouse slums. In
Baltimore, neighborhoods were good or bad, and it was easy to avoid the
trouble spots. On Capitol Hill, you could buy a three-dollar cup of
coffee and a dime bag of heroin within five minutes of each other. One
wrong turn, and you were suddenly starring in your own private version
of
Bonfire of the Vanities
.