Missing Pieces (3 page)

So there she was, in white shorts and revealing halter top, looking gorgeous as usual, despite her sleepless night, her shoulder-length blond curls gloriously askew—the freshly fucked look, she called it, although she hadn’t been, she groused. That makes two of us, I almost confided, but didn’t. I could never bring myself to discuss my sex life with Jo Lynn, partly because I didn’t trust her to be discreet, mostly because there was nothing much to tell. I’d been in a monogamous relationship for almost a quarter of a century. To Jo Lynn, monogamy equaled monotony. I’d given up trying to change her mind. Lately, my words sounded hollow, even to me.

Jo Lynn, on the other hand, was always more than willing, eager even, to share the secrets of her love life with me. Details of her escapades flowed from her lips as briskly as water from a mountain stream. I tried to tell her that her love life was nobody’s business but her own, but this was a concept she clearly didn’t understand. I tried to remind her that discretion was the better part of valor; she looked at me as if I were crazy. I tried to warn her against disease; she scowled and looked away. I told her I really wasn’t interested; she laughed loud and long. “Of course you’re interested,” she’d say, and of course she was right. “Just don’t talk about it in front of the girls,” I’d plead, to no avail. Jo Lynn loved an audience. She relished the effect she had on my daughters, who openly worshipped her, especially Sara. Sometimes they’d gang up on me, laugh at my so-called conservative ways, talk about dragging me onto one of those dreadful daytime talk shows they sometimes watched. “Girl, you need a makeover!” Jo Lynn would shout in the hyperextended voice of Rolonda or Ricki Lake, while Sara doubled over with laughter.

“He’s cute,” Jo Lynn was muttering now, her face buried
so deep behind the morning paper that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her say anything at all.

“Did you say something?”

“He sure is cute,” she repeated, more clearly this time. “Just look at that face.” She spread the paper across the round glass top of the kitchen table. “I’m gonna marry that man,” she said.

I stared down at the front page of the local news section. Three men stared back: the President of the United States, in Florida to confer with local politicians; a Catholic priest, lending his support to a projected gay and lesbian rights march; and Colin Friendly, the ironically named accused killer of thirteen women, sitting in a courtroom in West Palm Beach. I was afraid to ask which of the three she meant.

“I’m serious,” she said, the long orange nail of her index finger tapping at the photograph of the accused murderer. “Just look at that face. He looks a little like Brad Pitt, don’t you think?”

“He looks like Ted Bundy,” I corrected, although, in truth, I couldn’t make out what he looked like. I’d taken off my reading glasses and everything about the newspaper was a soft blur.

“Put on your glasses,” she instructed, reading my mind, pushing the wire-rimmed half-glasses toward my face. The grainy black and white dots of the photograph immediately snapped into place, forming a clear, cohesive whole. “What do you see?”

“I see a cold-blooded killer,” I pronounced, about to remove the glasses when her hand stopped me.

“Where does it say he killed anybody?”

“Jo Lynn, do you actually read the paper or do you just look at the pictures?”

“I read the article, smarty-pants,” she said, and instantly
we were both ten years old, “and it doesn’t say one word about him being a murderer.”

“Jo Lynn, he killed at least thirteen women …”

“He’s
accused
of killing them, which doesn’t mean he did it. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that why there’s a trial?”

I opened my mouth to protest, thought better of it, said nothing.

“Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?” she continued, as I’d known she would. Benign silence had never worked with Jo Lynn.

“You think he’s innocent,” I stated, a technique I often used with clients. Instead of arguing, instead of trying to change their minds, instead of providing them with answers that might or might not be correct, I merely repeated their own words back at them, sometimes reframing those words in a more positive light, hopefully giving them time to discover the answers for themselves, sometimes just to let them know they’d been heard.

“I think there’s a good chance he might be. I mean, just look at that face. He’s beautiful.”

Reluctantly, I studied the photograph. Colin Friendly sat between his lawyers, two faceless men conferring with each other behind his back, as the accused serial killer hunched forward, staring blankly toward the empty witness stand. What I saw was a man in his early thirties, his dark wavy hair combed neatly away from his finely chiseled features, a face that, under other circumstances, I might have regarded as handsome. I knew, from other pictures I’d seen, that he was over six feet tall and slim, almost wiry. His eyes were said to be blue, although never
just
blue, but always
piercing
blue or
intensely
blue, although today’s photograph revealed nothing of the sort. But maybe it was hard for me to look at him objectively, even then.

“Don’t you think he’s gorgeous?”

I shook my head.

“You can’t be serious. He looks just like Brad Pitt, only his hair is darker, and his nose is longer and thinner.”

I stared at the thirty-seven-year-old woman sitting across from me. She’d gone from sounding like a ten-year-old to sounding like a love-struck teen. Would she ever grow up? I wondered. Did any of us? Or did we just grow old?

“Okay, so maybe he doesn’t look that much like Brad Pitt, but you’ve got to admit he’s good-looking. Charismatic. Yeah, that’s what he is—charismatic. At least, you have to admit that much.”

“It’s very hard for me to think of anyone who tortured and murdered thirteen women and girls as being either gorgeous or charismatic. I’m sorry, I just can’t do it.” I thought of Donna Lokash, a client of mine, whose daughter, Amy, had disappeared almost a year ago, a possible victim of Colin Friendly’s rage, although her body had yet to be found.

“You have to separate the two issues,” Jo Lynn was saying, and I almost laughed. I was the one, after all, who was always talking about separating issues. “The fact that he’s good-looking has nothing to do with whether or not he killed anybody.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

I shrugged. “What do you see when you look at him?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Aside from Brad Pitt.”

“I see a little boy who’s been hurt.” Jo Lynn’s voice was solemn, genuine.

“You see a boy who’s been hurt,” I parroted, recalling Jo Lynn as a child, gently rocking a stray kitten back and forth across her bare tummy. It had given her ringworm. “Where? Where do you see that?”

The bright orange nail drew a small circle around Colin Friendly’s mouth. “He has a sad smile.”

I studied the photograph more closely, surprised to discover she was right. “Don’t you think it’s odd,” I asked, “that, under the circumstances, he’s smiling at all?”

“It’s just boyish bravado,” she said, as if she’d known Colin Friendly all her life. “I find it endearing.”

I stood up, shuffled over to the kitchen counter, poured myself another cup of coffee. Clearly, I was going to need it. “Can we talk about something else?”

Jo Lynn swiveled around in her chair, held out her cup for me to fill. Her long tanned legs stretched toward me, the bright orange polish on her toenails peeking out from between the crossing leather bands of her white sandals. “You don’t think I’m serious, do you?”

“Jo Lynn, let’s not …”

“Let’s not what? Talk about something just because it’s important to me?”

I stared into my coffee cup, wishing I were back in bed. “This is important to you?” I asked.

Jo Lynn sat up straight, drew her legs back beneath her chair, pushed her lips into a Bardot-like pout that men usually found appealing, but which had always annoyed the hell out of me. “Yes, it is.”

“So where do you want me to send the wedding present?” I asked, straining for levity.

Jo Lynn was having none of it. “Sure, make a joke. I’m just a big joke to you.”

I took a long, slow sip of my coffee, the only thing I could think to do that wouldn’t get me into more trouble. “Look, Jo Lynn, what is it you want me to say?”

“I want you to stop being so damned dismissive.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was being dismissive.”

“That’s the problem. You never do.”

My shortcomings weren’t something I particularly
wanted to get into at this hour of the morning. “Look, can’t we just agree to disagree? It’s a beautiful day. I really don’t want to waste it arguing about some guy you’ve never even met.”

“I’m going to change that.”

“What?”

“I’m going to meet him.”

“What?”

“I’m going to meet him,” she repeated stubbornly. “I’m going to go down to that courthouse next week and meet him.”

My patience was all but exhausted. This was worse than dealing with Sara. “You’re going to go to the courthouse …”

“That’s what I just said. I’m going to the courthouse. On Monday.”

“And what do you think you’re going to accomplish by going to the courthouse?” I asked, ignoring the little therapist’s voice in the back of my head urging me to be quiet, to let Jo Lynn sputter on until she simply ran out of steam. “They’re not going to let you talk to him.”

“They might.”

“They won’t.”

“Then I’ll just sit in the courtroom and watch. I’ll be there for him.”

“You’ll be there for him,” I repeated numbly.

“As support. And stop repeating everything I say. It’s very annoying.”

I tried another approach. “I thought you were going job-hunting Monday.”

“I’ve been job-hunting every day for the past two weeks. I’ve left resumes all over town.”

“Have you followed any of them up with a phone call? You know you have to be persistent.” I hated the sound of my own voice as much as the look on Jo Lynn’s face told
me she did. “God knows you can be persistent when you want to be.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be,” she shot back. “Maybe I’m tired of working at a bunch of stupid low-paying jobs for a bunch of stupid lowlifes. Maybe I’m thinking of starting my own business.”

“Doing what?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe opening an exercise studio, or a dog-sitting service, something like that.”

I struggled to keep my face calm while digesting this latest bulletin. Jo Lynn had never attended an exercise class in her life; she lived in an apartment complex that didn’t allow pets.

“You don’t think I can do it.”

“I think you can do anything you set your mind to,” I told her honestly. At the moment, it was the thing about her that worried me the most.

“But you think it’s a dumb idea.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to. I can see it all over your face.”

I turned away, caught sight of myself in the dark glass of the wall oven. She was right. Even through the smoky glass, I could see how pale my skin had turned, how slack-jawed I’d become. Of course, it didn’t help that my hair hung around my face like a limp, chin-length mop, or that the bags under my eyes had yet to shrink with the light of day. “You need money to start a business,” I began, once again ignoring the tiny therapist pummeling her fists against the inside of my brain.

“I’ll have money.”

“You will? How? When?”

“When Mom dies,” she said, and smiled, the same sad twisting of her lips as the killer in the morning paper.

For an instant, it felt as if my heart had stopped. I quickly lowered my coffee cup to the counter, took one
shaking hand inside the other. “How could you say such a thing?”

And suddenly she was laughing, great whoops of glee that circled the air above my head like giant lassos, threatening to drop down and take hold of my throat, to jerk me mercilessly toward the ceiling, leave me kicking frantically at the air. “Lighten up, lady. Can’t you tell when someone’s kidding?”

“Kidding on the square,” I said, then bit down hard on my lower lip. Our mother always said that.

“I never understood what that was supposed to mean,” Jo Lynn said testily.

“It means you’re kidding, but you’re not really kidding. You’re making a joke, but really you’re serious.”

“I know what it means,” she said.

“Anyway,” I insisted, “Mom’s only seventy-five, and she’s in great shape. I wouldn’t count on her going anywhere for a while yet.”

“I never count on her for anything,” Jo Lynn said.

“Where is all this coming from?” I asked.

Now it was Jo Lynn’s turn to stare at me with open-mouthed disbelief. “It’s always been like this. Where have you been all these years?”

“Well, how long is it going to go on? You’re all grown up now. How long are you going to keep blaming her for things she may or may not have done over twenty years ago?”

“Don’t minimize what she did.”

“What
exactly
did she do?”

Jo Lynn shook her head, brushed several blond curls away from her cheek, pulled on the long gold loop earring that dangled from her right ear. “Nothing. She did nothing wrong. She was the perfect mother. Forget I said anything.” She shook her head. The blond curls fell back across her flushed cheek. “It’s just PMS talking.”

That didn’t mollify me. “Have you ever stopped to think that there is no such thing as PMS, and that this is the way you really are?”

Jo Lynn stared at me, green eyes narrowing, orange mouth pursing, as if she were giving serious thought to leaping across the table and wrestling me to the floor. Then suddenly her eyes widened, her lips parted, and she was laughing again, only this time the laughter was genuine and expansive, and I was able to join her.

“That was funny,” she said, as I basked in her unexpected goodwill.

The phone rang. It was our mother. As if on cue. As if she’d been privy to our conversation. As if she knew our most secret thoughts.

“Tell her we were just talking about her,” Jo Lynn whispered, loud enough to be heard.