Next Time You See Me (3 page)

In front of the couch, under the coffee table, Aileen’s knitting basket was undisturbed, needles jabbed into a ball of green yarn, the neat rows and cables of something nearly finished. I remembered now: She had called me last month for Ben’s size; she was knitting him a sweater for the fall.

Mac pulled away and walked out of the living room. I followed him through the foyer, the dining room, and kitchen—all weirdly serene considering the mayhem in the other part of the house—and up the narrow back staircase.

The first room at the top of the stairs had been Rosie’s. Her real name was Siobhan but, like Seamus, forty years ago difficult names like that had been jettisoned for easy nicknames. By the time Hugh and Aileen had had their third American child they’d wised up and named him Daniel since it came with a ready-made nickname, Danny, that was still essentially his given name. Rosie’s room was now a guest room fitted out with a double bed and two sets of bunk beds to accommodate her family when they visited. Danny’s room was last, closest to the master bedroom at the far end of the hall, and still had just the one twin bed. Mac’s room was in the middle, with a door at either end to access both the back and front stairways. He was sitting on the edge of the double bed that had been installed at the time of his first marriage. There was a crib for Ben in the corner of the room. Aileen and Hugh had been avid grandparents, gathering the entire family together as often as possible.

I sat beside my husband and put my arms around him, aware of the soft heaves of his chest. There was absolutely nothing I could say to make him feel better. And so we sat there in silence, locked in each other’s arms, while wave after wave of grief barreled through him.

Finally his breathing slowed. He lifted his head and looked at me. “I have to call Rosie and Danny.”

“I can do that.”

“No. I need to.”

He had left his cell phone at home so I handed him mine. He called Rosie first, not only because she was the oldest but because by nature she was far steadier than Danny.

I heard the first wail of Rosie weeping, and then listened while they discussed her now inevitable travels from Long Island to Westchester. The entire family would come, Larry taking off from work and the children missing their first days of school. Mac and Rosie agreed that everyone would stay together at a local hotel.

The call to Danny, next, turned out to be easier simply because he didn’t answer.

“Probably passed out,” Mac said, handing me back my phone.

On our way out, Mac stopped to look at one of the framed photos hanging on the foyer wall: a Sears portrait circa 1979, showing Hugh and Aileen posed in a tight cluster with their three children in front of a hazy blue backdrop that suggested a warm spring afternoon.

Outside, sleepless neighbors huddled, watching the investigators go about their work. Pawtusky stood near the curb, talking with someone. Chilly wisps now laced the middle-of-the-night air. Grasshoppers sawed mercilessly. I wanted to get out of there, wanted to take Mac home and put him to bed so in the morning we could wake up and realize this nightmare was just a dream. But before we could reach the car, Pawtusky stopped us.

“We’ll need someone to ID the bodies,” he told Mac, “and we’ll want to interview you.”

“Of course.”

“Mind if I ask you one question now?”

Mac paused. Waited.

“Your mother, did she wear any rings?”

“Just her wedding and engagement rings.”

“Expensive diamond—that kind of engagement ring?”

“Wasn’t she wearing it when . . .” He couldn’t finish. “She’s worn her rings for forty-five years. Hasn’t been able to take them off for twenty.”

Pawtusky said nothing; he didn’t need to. There was only one reason you would ask that question. And there was only one answer.

“How did they get the rings off?” Mac ground his jaw. His face grew red.

“Sorry,” Pawtusky said.

“Did you find her finger?”

Pawtusky nodded, his Adam’s apple moving slowly up and slowly down. “And the wedding band. But not the diamond.”

T
hree days later, we buried them. In the interim, I had returned to Brooklyn to collect Ben and my mother and pack a few things, while Mac stayed in Bronxville to arrange the funeral. Meanwhile evidence was collected but there was almost nothing, just a single unidentified fingerprint that didn’t match any entries in any database. Their killers were either seasoned or lucky. The randomness of the crime—that it appeared to be a botched robbery, with the thieves hastily severing Aileen’s finger and taking her diamond ring so they would reap some reward for their trouble—was particularly excruciating. When my family had been murdered, we knew who we were looking for; this time, there were no suspects, not even a person of interest. The MacLearys had been exemplary citizens, consummate parents and grandparents, and had had no enemies. No one could think of a single reason anyone would want to kill them and yet they had been attacked by someone who had been intent on leaving them dead.

As we waited by two gaping holes side by side on the cemetery lawn, the only conversation anyone seemed capable of sustaining was about how lucky we were that the weather had cooperated. It was a beautiful day, balmy and breezy. Mourners had excavated their summer closets for dark clothing: men buttoned up in their suits, women in their pantsuits and dresses and hats.

Mac stood at the head of the graves with Rosie, Larry, and their kids fingering rosary beads while the priest read a poetic eulogy to Hugh and Aileen, who he called “two truly beloved people” as if he had known them personally, which he probably did. I stood at the front edge of a large crowd with my mother, Ben, Billy Staples, Mac’s ex-wife, Val, and her husband, Paul. Behind and around us gathered what seemed like innumerable friends, neighbors, and customers from the MacLearys’ hardware store. Detective Arnie Pawtusky was also there, representing the local precinct, and if I knew detectives also keeping his eyes open, working the case. Only after the caskets had been lowered into the ground, Mac had shoveled a dollop of earth over each parent and was handing the spade to Rosie, did Danny MacLeary finally show up.

Drunk. Unsteady on his sneakered feet. Loudly bawling. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt with an ironic—inappropriate—retro logo from a bowling alley.

Rage flashed across Rosie’s face and she raised the shovel as if she might strike him. Mac touched her arm and she froze a moment, then shook her head and drove the spade into the ground to dig up some of the preloosened soil, which she tossed atop one buried coffin and then the other. Rosie was a tall woman like the rest of the family, slender but thickened at the middle from childbearing; she had given birth to five children, one stillborn, the oldest now in college and the youngest in kindergarten. She suffered no nonsense, like the kind Danny always seemed to bring with him. She handed the shovel to Larry, her husband, and turned her attention to the yawning holes that were about to swallow her parents.

Danny lurched past us, smelling of whiskey, the same brand drunk by his father. But Hugh had controlled his drinking and had openly reprimanded Danny for his lack of discipline with alcohol and everything else.

“Who did this?” Danny shouted. He grabbed the shovel from Larry and flung dirt into the air, hard chips of ground that fell partially into the graves but also sent dust into the eyes of the nearest mourners. “
Who fucking did this?
”

Mac pulled the shovel out of his younger brother’s hands and Danny buckled to his knees, sobbing. Looking at the back of his head, I noticed new strands of gray in his thick black hair. He might never grow up, but even Danny would age.

We waited, and soon enough the usual narcissistic drama that Danny tended to serve up at family occasions subsided enough for the priest to finish the service. I could tell that Mac and Rosie were thinking about Danny, though, the way Mac’s jaw was clenched and Rosie’s eyes were narrowed.

Afterward everyone was invited to a local tavern for food and drink. Mac and Rosie stood together, stoically accepting condolences from the line of people streaming in. Mom; Rosie’s husband, Larry; and I sat at a table feeding the kids. The large back room allotted to our reception had two windows but they were covered with heavy drapes, erasing the bright day outside.

Across the room, Val greeted a blossoming group of people she seemed pleased to see, people she had assumedly met on parental visits during her long marriage to Mac, people I didn’t know. After a while, she came over and squeezed in a chair between me and my mother. I had had dinner with Mac and Val once when they were married, and had liked her. She smiled, sending a spray of tiny wrinkles upward beside both eyes. Her hair was longer now, styled to accentuate her pretty cheekbones, and colored a lighter shade of brown. When she leaned in to whisper in my ear, I smelled her sweet perfume.

“Everyone thinks you stole Mac from me.” She pulled away so I could see her wink.

“Is that why no one’s talking to me?”

“I straightened them out. They’ll come around. Of course . . .” She trailed off, not wanting, I supposed, to state the still undigested fact that there was now little reason for us to visit Bronxville. “You hanging in there?”

“More or less.”

“And Mac—dark side grab him yet?”

“What do you mean?”

She looked at me, decided something and didn’t elaborate. I looked over and saw Mac watching us with a frozen expression that was broken by a tentative smile. He had slept little in the last three nights and his eyes were badly bloodshot. Every time I looked at him lately, I felt helpless, uncertain how to ease his pain. Is that what she meant? Was Mac prone to depression in a way I had never seen in him?

Val patted my shoulder and went looking for her husband, Paul.

“So that’s Mac’s wife,” Mom said.

“No, I’m his wife.”

“You know what I meant. She seems nice.”

“She is.”

“It’s a good thing they didn’t have children.”

I nodded. It
was
a good thing. Though maybe children would have held them together when the accumulation of years couldn’t.

“Speaking of children,” Mom whispered as Danny’s voice rose above the din. Danny, the eternal child. Beggar of attention. Breaker of hearts and wallets.

“I was out of town; I don’t know why no one could find me!”

Detective Pawtusky seemed surprised by the outburst, but he had never met Danny before let alone tried talking with him about a subject he wasn’t interested in pursuing—such as why it had taken forty-eight hours to locate him even after his parents’ murders had been splashed across the headlines.

“Let’s go outside,” Pawtusky said.

Danny raised his hand to the bartender, who didn’t have to ask his order, just handed him another whiskey. He took a long drink before gracing Pawtusky with a response.

“No way.”

Pawtusky stared at him a moment before handing him a business card. “Give me a call when you’re sober.” He turned around and made a path through the crowd—and didn’t flinch at what Danny said next as he ripped up the card and tossed it on the floor.

“Fuck you.”

But I knew Pawtusky heard him, because everyone did. After a brief lull, subdued chatter filled the dark space again.

B
y the end of the afternoon, when most everyone had gone home, a small group stood outside in the parking lot saying our exhausted good-byes. Billy Staples had lingered and took the opportunity to hold Mac in a long, tight embrace.

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” Billy said.

“I’ll probably be at the office.”

“Take another day off.”

“We’ll see.”

“Stop trying to hold it all together. I mean it. Karin?”

“I’ll take care of him,” I stroked Mac’s back; his tension felt steely beneath the dark suit jacket. “I won’t let him go to work until next week. I’ll make him take some time for himself.”

Mac nodded; he wasn’t going to argue with me in front of people. But I knew him: His impulse was to take action against his emotions. Fight them off. Stay in control. But I had other plans for him tomorrow. I would send Ben out with Mom and keep Mac home with me, give him a back rub, a neck rub, make love to him, whatever it took to help him know that love had not abandoned him despite the tragedy. Tomorrow night was our long-planned anniversary dinner, and more and more I thought we should keep the reservation, even if just to honor the strong marriage his parents had sustained for nearly fifty years. A quiet celebration, just the two of us, with wine and candlelight . . . it wouldn’t hurt him and maybe it would even help a little.

“You hear that?” Billy said. “She’s the boss, so you listen to her.”

Half Mac’s mouth rose up in a sort of smile, satisfying Billy that he had broken through a bit. “Okay. Talk tomorrow. I love you, man.”

“So”—Mac turned to Rosie as Billy walked to his car—“I was thinking I’d stop by Mom and Dad’s house to get one last look at the scene.”

“I haven’t been there yet,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to face the damage.”

“It’s up to you.”

Rosie looked at me, and I said what I thought: “It
is
hard to see.”