Red on Red (42 page)

Late in the afternoon, Nick got up and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. His ankle didn’t hurt much anymore; the sprain must have been slight. Lena didn’t look up from chopping onions as she greeted him. She must have recognized his tread, he thought. When she asked him if he wanted some water, he nodded, and she filled a glass for him. She filled another for herself and led him to the table, where they sat. Nick realized what a terrible spy he was, obtrusive but transparent, needy and biddable. Still, the water was just what he wanted, and he drained his glass. Lena brushed her hair back and smiled.

“You know, you’re great with kids, Nick. You and—Allison—you never … ? Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

Nick felt both light-headed and unusually grounded. It was like breathing a different atmosphere here, with too little oxygen or too much. Lena knew his wife’s name, even though Esposito had never met her. It didn’t trouble Nick, either subject, Allison or kids, as much as he’d expected it would have.

“No, it’s all right. We tried. Came close. Three miscarriages, the last one at six months. All girls, daughters. Wasn’t meant to be.”

“My God, poor Allison. And Nick, you, too—God bless you both.”

Nick had never expected to say as much as he had, so briefly, never thought such consolation would come with still fewer words. It was sad, genuinely sad, and someone was genuinely sorry.

“Yeah. It threw us. Finished us, pretty much, I think. My father was sick. I went home to look after him, but it wasn’t just that. When I go back home, Allison and I are going to have ‘that talk.’ ”

Lena stood and almost hugged him, carefully negotiating whatever bruises she thought he might have. She tousled his hair, as if he were a child with a skinned knee. The phone rang, and both of them stared at it, resentful of the interruption. Lena scowled, then bellowed toward the entertainment center—“Get that! Do I have to do everything around here?”—and it rang a second time, but not a third. Nick was somewhat startled by the outburst, and Lena smiled, a little sheepish at her show of temper, a little proud of the result.

“I don’t know what to say, Nick. I’m just happy to have you here.”

Nick didn’t know what to say, either. He was happy to be here, too. He was glad he’d told her about his losses, glad he didn’t have to go on talking. Not that he ever had talked about it, even with Allison, summing it up as he’d just done with a quick litany of frank facts.
That talk
 … Would it have helped, to talk more? What would they have been like, their daughters?

“I think I’m gonna take a walk.”

Lena looked concerned. “Did I say … Was it … ?”

“No, Lena, you’ve been a pal. All of you have.”

But as Nick rose from the table, ready to step outside for some air, to dwell on whether he should head back to the city or maybe relax for another day, Johnny raced in and grabbed his waist, weeping. Nick was about to tell him not to worry, that he wasn’t leaving, before it occurred to Nick what vanity it was to think that he meant that much to Johnny. There was a crash of knocked-over furniture in a far room as Esposito stumbled behind, barking at his son angrily for a moment before he looked at Nick, his eyes also watery.

“John! I told you to wait! You never—Ah, Nick. I’m so sorry. There was a call, Nick, from work. Not about work. They said they tried to get you….”

T
here were the saints, always, but Nick had no interest in them. People, that’s all they were. Better of course, but people still. Not straight to the top, either; Nick was held back by the presumption, put off by the abstraction—Holy Agony, Holy Cross, Holy Name of Jesus, Holy Rosary, Holy Trinity. Forget about the further superlatives, Most Holy Crucifix, Most Holy Redeemer, Most Precious Blood. Something in between, high and low, a woman you could talk to—Mary, Help of Christians; Our Lady, Queen of Angels; Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs; the city was full of outlets. There were the old-world hometown angles, in the ward-boss put-in-a-word-for-you way—
Don’t I know your uncle?
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Lourdes, of Loreto, Mount Carmel, Pompeii, and Vilnius. Plus there were the theme channels, available to anyone with the need, in the mood—Our Lady of Good Counsel, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Victory. And these were only the parishes on the island of Manhattan. In the Bronx, there was Our Lady of Grace, of Mercy, of Refuge, and of Solace. In Brooklyn and Queens, Our Lady of the Cenacle, of China, of Consolation, of Miracles, of Perpetual Help, of the Angelus, of the Blessed Sacrament, the Miraculous Medal, the Presentation. What more could you ask for? In the worst weather, you had Our Lady of the Snows. It was not yet winter, but warmth had gone from the world. All the same Lady, all different ways of making conversation. Staten Island was a ferry ride away, for Our Lady of Pity; Our Lady, Star of the Sea. Nick closed the phone book. There was no point in calling any of them. He was from Good Shepherd; they were. That’s where it would be.

When his father died, Nick thought mainly of his mother. He didn’t feel bad about that. His father had been such a light traveler that his
going from being there to not being there seemed a less radical transition than most. Nick’s sense of his father was still fresh. Whereas his mother’s absence was so long-standing that she was becoming obscured, covered over in hazy layers of memory like coats of varnish, the deepening amber beautiful but not true. Nick wanted to strip the image down, wipe it clean, to see her again as he had known her. Scraps of story and song came back—a cabbagy smell in the kitchen, falling asleep on warm skin. Never angry, not once. For days after, Nick could hear the sound of her voice, and images of her played in his mind—her soaping a mustard stain from a white blouse on the side of the tub; giving him a penny, saying it was lucky; the time she chased a fly with a swatter until it flew out the window, into the alley. She told him after that she might try out for “your Yankees,” which made him sick with laughter. A powerful help, she had called him. He had never forgotten, even when he’d failed to believe it. He saw her again, more clearly than he had in years. She and his father were together now in heaven, the priest said. Nick had trouble seeing that, but there was no point in arguing.

His father had gone to sleep and not woken up. He had asked the super, Mr. Barry, to come by to fix the hall light, which had started to flicker. Mr. Barry had said he’d drop by later, around two. He found the door open. When he went in, he found Mr. Meehan in his lounge chair. It looked like he was napping, but he couldn’t be wakened. The cops were called, and then the precinct called Nick, but his cellphone wasn’t on. Six messages from Lieutenant Ortiz, two from Napolitano. Lena was profusely apologetic about having told Nick to call home the day before. He knew that she wasn’t the one who should be sorry, the one who would be. That he had left Allison in order to care for his father was a half-truth that both he and Allison had been able to live with, at least for a while. But Nick’s last thirty-odd hours as a make-believe uncle should have been spent as an actual son.

The building seemed dirtier when he walked in, more graffiti scribbled on the walls, the plaster cracked. When Nick closed the apartment door behind him, he wanted to go back out. The lounge chair was in recline mode, the footrest extended, as it had been only when occupied. The TV was on, tuned to a cooking show, with a sexy brunette tossing pasta in a pan. His father wouldn’t have watched that, not even if it had been a special on stew. It must have been the cops assigned, waiting for the ME, the morgue truck. The ME could take a while, he knew. Another
job, another DOA. You had to pass the time somehow. He pictured a bored rookie on the couch, flipping channels, his father dead in the chair beside him. Before he could become indignant, Nick remembered how often he had done the same. If there was no family there, what was the cop supposed to do—genuflect, tear his shirt, ululate? Nick should have been there, here, himself. Nick put the TV on mute. He did not turn it off for days.

Nick felt tired, and thought about lying down but decided against it, afraid he’d hear the voices in the pipes, afraid he’d be too glad to hear them. He went to the bathroom, to wash his face. Certain small objects became heartbreaking: a toothbrush in a glass, a threaded needle on the table, beside a little black button. He choked up when he saw them, reflecting that they had been deprived of their purpose, orphaned, and he nearly sobbed at the word. He threw them out so he wouldn’t have to see them. Beside his father’s bed, a stiff plastic suitcase had been laid out, hard navy-blue half shells on hinges, empty. The trip home, sooner than he’d thought. It was a comfort to imagine that his father had died making plans, reengaged with life, ready for something new; it was not a comfort to think that even the prospect of a holiday had been too much for him, too wild a ride. The Meehans did not thrive on change, had little talent for adaptation.

Nick went out to find Mr. Barry, who was in the alley, setting aside the paper and glass for recycling. He was a dim, sweet-natured man, long-faced, with a tight, thin-lipped mouth made for bad news. He pulled off a work glove and shook Nick’s hand.

“A fine man. He will be missed.”

Nick nodded. He hesitated before asking him anything, as if there might be some overlooked detail, some clue. His father must have died sometime after ten in the morning and before two in the afternoon, the day before. Had Nick felt anything then, some rend in the psychic fabric? No, he’d been napping, watching TV. Mr. Barry saw how he struggled with the question, and ventured a response. “He didn’t suffer.”

Nick smiled at the preposterous claim, mindless and kind. And yet he was decent to say so, and probably right.

“He was lucky to have a son like you.”

Mr. Barry’s upper lip trembled as if he might be stifling a sneeze, and Nick clasped his hand again. The remark was delivered with far greater authority than the medical opinion, nearly
ex cathedra
. How
many late-night calls had Jamie made to his father from hospitals and jails, shrieking and pleading? How golden the Meehans’ luck must have seemed to the Barry family. Nick went back inside to make coffee, a whole pot.

The phone calls to the funeral home, his father’s union. He found the address book and called overseas, to Ireland, speaking to cousins he hadn’t seen in decades. Three calls to Allison before he had the courage to leave a message. The neighborhood would tell itself. He picked a suit, a tie. The wake was one night, the funeral the next day. A lot of cops, more people from Nick’s generation than his father’s, showing their faces. “Yes, it was sudden. No pain.” “For the best, yes.” “God’s hands.” Jamie Barry came to the funeral parlor, with a new haircut and clean clothes, looking surprisingly sober. Nick tried to muster a compliment, but it escaped him; Jamie offered condolences and left quickly. Daysi came to the wake, Allison to the funeral. Nick hadn’t arranged that—Allison had been out of town, the planes delayed by weather—but he was relieved by their separate attendance. Esposito and Lena urged him to come back home with them afterward. The boys were too young to come for this, it was felt, but they had made cards, with crayon and construction paper, hearts and angels. Nick was still on sick leave, had a week of bereavement leave after that. He wanted to go back upstate—it had been a sweet refuge—but the time had passed.

On the morning of the funeral, Nick was about to get into the shower when there was a knock at the apartment door. He couldn’t think who was supposed to come—no one ever visited, except possibly Michael Cole—and he grabbed a towel and his gun before padding down the hall. The floor creaks gave him away, even as he stood to the side and listened.

“Nick? Is that you? Are you there?”

Allison. They’d agreed to meet here, and though she was fifteen minutes early, Nick had forgotten altogether. He didn’t want to open the door as he was; he knew he wasn’t supposed to look his best today, of all days, but this was too much.

“Allison! Hang on. I’m sorry—let me just get—”

“Nick, I have to use the bathroom.”

“Hang on. Sorry—”

When he unbolted the door for her, both of them were struck by the sight of each other. Allison wore a black suit, and her chestnut hair was
held back in a tortoiseshell clip. With her sunglasses on, she had a foreign-movie chic, the sexy assassin, cyanide in a secret compartment in a stiletto heel. Her poise, her composure, were so beautiful, nearly as beautiful as when she would lose both, snorting with laughter like a truck driver, then covering her mouth with her hand, like a schoolgirl in church. She looked at him again, laughed again, shook her head in apology.

“My God, Nick. You look like—I can’t even say. You look like you spend time in a
really
dangerous steam room.”

She giggled again, despite herself, and then brushed past him toward the bathroom—“Sorry. I really do have to go.”—rushing unsteadily on her heels, punishing the old floorboards with them. At least it hadn’t been awkward to see each other, Nick thought. He went to the kitchen and put the gun on the table. He rinsed out two cups, had begun to clean the coffeepot when Allison came in. She looked at him, smiled, and then embraced him. It was so warm and easy, the way they held each other, and though Nick had anticipated some kind of best-behavior, dignity-in-sorrow cast to their interaction, he hadn’t expected to be reminded of how it felt to have her hands on the bare skin of his back.