Father's Day (20 page)

“I mean in this life, Father.”

“If you are talking about crime and punishment, Mr. Klein, I believe the statute of limitations has expired and I’m afraid our time is up as well. I’m sorry that I could not have been a bigger help.”

“I heard enough, Father.”

“Oh, Mr. Klein. I see you brought a young lady with you. Your daughter, I presume. Perhaps she would like to confess as well.”

“Go to hell.”

Lou slammed the door hard behind him. The light over the door flickered twice and went out. Maggie rose and met him in the aisle. They went down the church steps together at a gallop.

“What happened in there, Dad?”

“A confession”

“Yeah, right.”

They drove for a while in an awkward silence. It seemed funny to him, how Maggie always looked forward to church as a kid, enjoyed it, in a peaceful kind of way. She’d cuddle under his arm and gaze dreamily at the lighted windows. He’d always hoped the serenity of that moment would follow her through her life. Maybe she thought she could find something there that
she couldn’t find at home or in school. It was the songs that captivated her most, fervent voices singing together, the choir overhead in the balcony. They would sing together sometimes. Lou couldn’t remember when she’d stopped singing. He only knew that he missed the sound of it.

“What did you do in there, punch out the priest?”

“I probably would have if there wasn’t a wall between us.”

“Why, what did he say?”

“Isn’t a confession supposed to be private?”

“You didn’t really go in there to confess.”

“Who said I was the one who confessed.”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

“Only when I’m trying to hide something.”

“Is that what that priest was trying to do in there?”

“Hey, you’re pretty smart. You should be a cop.”

“I’m the daughter of one.”

He held her hand and squeezed it and didn’t let it go until they pulled into the paved suburban driveway and it was time to say good-bye. He looked at her face, at the soft hand he held in his.

“You never knew your grandfather. You should have.”

“I just know what you told me about him.”

“We were never really close, especially at first. Not that it mattered, but he didn’t express himself very well or very often. It was like he was hidden from me, behind the uniform, his dark mustache and glasses. I never felt he really knew me, what I was feeling. He wasn’t cold or distant, not deliberately. I guess I felt he was just limited in his understanding. The longing of a confused kid was just too far outside of his experience. It wasn’t his fault.”

“I feel that way sometimes.”

“I know and I always hoped it would be different for you.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m not worried about it.”

“The day he died, I stopped him before he left for work. He was already in the car. It was early on a Friday morning, much earlier than I usually got up. He seemed surprised to see me. I told him I wanted to be a cop, that I always wanted to be a cop, and that I was afraid to tell him because I thought he didn’t want that life for me, didn’t want me to be the kind of person he’d become, make the same mistakes.”

“What did he say?”

“I thought he was going to cry. I’d never seen him cry before, didn’t think he was capable of it. I saw it in his eyes—all the speeches, the afternoons playing catch in Morris Park, the late nights in front of the television waiting for my mother to get home from her waitressing job, ice cream at Manny’s—it all suddenly meant something, it was all worth it. At that moment, we both knew it, we’d connected somehow, father and son.”

“That’s sad. I mean, it’s nice, but sad.”

“I never saw him again. By nightfall he was dead. The guy who shot him never saw his face. He came up behind him and blew him away. I always felt that if he’d only seen him, talked to him, he never would have pulled the trigger.

“I didn’t get to see him after he was shot. My mother ran to the hospital. I stayed with Mrs. Conforti next door. It was a closed casket, a Jewish burial. He died on a Friday night and he was in the ground by Sunday afternoon. It was a graveside service, brief, everybody holding umbrellas in the pouring rain. I had on these brand-new shoes and they filled with water. An old rabbi with a grayish beard and a smelly black suit mumbled some prayers in Hebrew and my uncle Herman handed me a shovel. The dirt was saturated with water and every shovel full felt like a ton.”

Lou walked with her up the driveway to the back of the house as though he was the owner, an upper-class dolt, stupid with money, just back from vacation with his daughter. There
were no dogs on guard to alert a nosy neighbor, no house wives on patrol. Lou knocked on the door and waited. He heard the deadbolt turn, saw the door handle turn a second later. He watched Maggie hug her mother, their eyes closed for the length of the embrace as if they were reciting some silent prayer.

“C’mon in. I’ll make coffee.”

“Sure. Why not?”

The door opened into a sunny kitchen, with lots of windows, dressed immaculately in decorative tile and stainless steel. Fresh flowers were arranged in a crystal vase on the table, their purple and orange petals just beginning to wilt. On the counter were various appliances, all of them the same shade of washed-out white, lined up according to size, from small to large, a can opener, a toaster, a microwave, and something Lou couldn’t quite identify. The dishwasher was changing cycles and the spray of water was the only sound in the room.

Lou walked past all that antiseptic cleanliness, the cleanest kitchen he’d ever seen, and thought about Maggie rummaging through his refrigerator, wondering what she might find there that she couldn’t find here. The island in the center of the kitchen gleamed. The bowl of fruit in the center of the table, red apples and green pears, had the flawless smoothness of wax, like something in a painting.

He followed them toward the middle of the house, finding it easy to navigate the open floor plan, walls placed at awkward angles, serving no purpose, halls leading into long sunken rooms with polished hardwood floors and flat, white walls. The furniture was low, Lou thought, couches and chairs flat against the floor as if their legs had been cut off, the cushions wrinkled and crushed. Much of the walls were bare, like a blank canvas, with only small-framed pictures arranged in clusters, breaking the continuity. He paused and looked at the pictures, small and insignificant in the corner. He scanned for his daughter’s face in
one of them. They looked like framed postcards, stock shots of European architecture and exotic animals.

He moved through the living room and dining room, into the front foyer, near the front door and the grand carpeted staircase to the second floor. Behind him, a monstrous bay window held his reflection. The entire house seemed to be lined with thick glass, designed to provide a view for those on the inside looking out. It resembled a green house by day, where the burning rays of the sun were magnified through the glass. But the plants were made of plastic, the wilting flowers on the table bought at the grocery store. At night, the whole house must have appeared as a lighted stage, visible from the outside, a house of mirrors.

The heat kicked on, whining noisily at first, fans humming in the walls like rats, sending a swath of warm air across his face. It reminded him of the sound he’d made as a kid, when his father showed him how to blow air through a blade of grass. They’d sat together at the top of the hill in Morris Park. His father picked a thick blade of onion grass and held it between his thumbs, his mouth pressed against his knuckles. He thought it had sounded like a trumpet. Lou had spent a few lazy, summer, afternoons there with Maggie and taught her the same thing—the various uses for a blade of grass, the music it made, how it tickled her face.

He took the coffee with two hands and sat on what he thought was the sturdiest chair in the room, something wide, flat, and square with a lot of wood. He was smiling but it was pasted on like a donkey’s tail. He felt a tickle at the back of his throat and coughed a few times into his sleeve. The three of them looked around the room, at anything but each other and didn’t say a word for a long while.

“Nice place you have here.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s you.”

“I like it.”

“Terrific neighborhood, too. It’s just nicer out here in the suburbs. The air is cleaner. The people are even nicer. They smile and wave, like no one’s got a problem in the world. Everything, it’s just nicer.”

“Yeah, it is different than the city. You ought to think about getting out yourself. Why not?”

“I don’t know. Where would I go?”

“There are lots of places, Lou. Depends on what you’re looking for.”

“I don’t think I could find what I’m looking for out here. I don’t even know what it is I am looking for. I’d forget to put the lid on the garbage can and my neighbors would hate me for a month.”

“You just said how nice everybody was here.”

“They are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If I explain it to you,” he told her, “you might not be so nice anymore.”

“Don’t start that. I’ll be nice.”

“Ok, it’s like this: Here’s this nice life that people live, it insulates them. They don’t ever have to see what life is really like, the ugly side of it, the painful side. Their kids don’t have to see it. They grow up thinking this is what life is like everywhere, for everyone. That this is how it’s supposed to be. But it’s a fantasy. It’s not real.”

“Why would I want my kids to taste the kind of world you’re talking about? I want better for my girl. That’s why she’s here. This is the reality I want for her. It certainly is safer.”

“I hope so.”

The coffee had cooled and he took a long swallow. He
smiled affectionately at Maggie and set his cup down on a coffee table of green glass. He rose slowly and went to the door. He sat in his car in the driveway for a second, watching his daughter wave good-bye and waiting for the door to close. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink and he was going to get one. If the clean suburban air and crime-free streets were an illusion, he’d need to take his thirst elsewhere, someplace where they understood the difference between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that any sort of evil could dress itself up in a set of fancy clothes, a set of fancy wheels, and walk right in, contaminate their sterile environment. Nobody would notice. They’d be too busy or too blind.

He needed a drink. He took Ea gle Road to Westchester Pike and then Market Street until he saw the statue of William Penn at the top of City Hall, his arm in the air as if he were raising a glass in toast, a drink for the dying.

Lou knew every bar in the city. There was just about one on every corner, private clubs where your membership card was your badge. The drinks were cheap and came fast, with no attachments. Ten bucks on the bar could get you where you needed to go. He knew places where that wouldn’t even get him in the door.

He pulled up in front of Coyne’s Pub, parked in a handicap spot, lit a cigarette, and rapped lightly on the locked door. A warm, hazy green light shone from a small window. A pair of beady black eyes peered out. The door cracked open a couple of inches and the longshoreman on the other side sharply made four words into one.

“Whad’yawant?”

“Finally, a few friendly words.”

“What’re you, a wiseguy?”

Lou slid his foot against the door and tried to get a look inside. He mentioned to the doorman some of the old boys who used to hang out in there. He asked him if the poker game in
the back room was still working, a game he’d walked out on ten years ago with his cards still on the table. He asked about old Sully, Dink, and big Dave. They’d called him big Dave because he was the smallest man in the department and had never lost a fight. The doorman grinned and backed off. The door slid slowly open.

Lou sat at the bar and ordered a Jameson on the rocks, glad that his membership was still in good standing. He didn’t mind drinking with rookies and he told them so. He didn’t plan on being there long anyway.

The first one tasted good and the second one even better. That was generally a bad sign. When the second one tastes better than the first, the rest go down easy. Pretty soon, he didn’t taste them at all. He was in a downhill race he couldn’t win and was picking up speed. He was rounding third, ready to slide into home. Unfortunately, his feet weren’t touching the ground. He grabbed one last mouthful of air before he hit the floor.

He didn’t lose consciousness for very long. The doorman lifted him into a chair. There was a cold wet rag on his face and someone was coaxing him into taking a sip of hot coffee. His eyes were trying hard to focus. The coffee was like a dose of reality. It was black, bitter, and hot.

“You make yourself right at home, don’t you, Klein.”

The flatness and sarcasm of the statement got his attention. “How do you know my name?”

“I snatched up y’er wallet whiles you were floppin’ around.”

“Can I have my it back?”

“Sure thing. Good luck, champ.”

Lou took a cup of black coffee with him and nursed it all the way home. The sun was on its way down but hadn’t gotten there yet. It burned his eyes and exploded in his brain. The ride home was like a dream. He didn’t remember any of it except that the phone was ringing when he got there.

“Do you ever answer your phone?”

“Sarah?”

“Lou, the police called. They think they found Carol Ann. They want me to come down to the police station. Lou, please, you have to come with me. I can’t do it alone. They want me to identify her body.”

He was still holding
the phone against his ear after she hung up, his head turned upward, looking at the sun setting at one end of the sky and the moon rising at the other. It was that time of day, not early or late, a time between other times, when everyone was trying to get somewhere but wasn’t there yet. Lou was on his way back to the morgue for the second time in as many days.

He started off dodging traffic through University City. He cruised past the old Civic Center and found a spot on Thirty-eighth street. Sarah was waiting for him, a cigarette in her trembling hand, the collar of a full-length fur coat turned up against the whistling wind. She must have already been on her way when she called, he thought. There was no way she could have beaten him there.