Simple (28 page)

There are times she studies the shoes and hair and clothing of the people who come to the Connolly house and tries to figure out what about those things costs so much money. The black dresses she will see tonight, the sundresses, the sandals with decorative knots or jewels, cost a week's or month's salary. But she's not always sure those things are pretty, that's what bothers her. When those people look at her clothing, do they see the price tags, twenty dollars, thirty dollars, or do they have no experience of shopping for bargains?

A mirror at the jail restroom shows her that she still presents a good appearance.

Several other visitors enter and congregate, talking rapidly and loudly about what they will buy their imprisoned family members. They vie for the mirror, stretching and examining.

What is she to think—he says now he didn't do it. All this week she has tried to get her head around a death sentence, a life imprisonment, but mostly inside her head is a constant prayer, Keep him alive, keep him alive.

She leaves the restroom, wondering who these rough-tough women who elbowed her aside are visiting and how Cal will defend himself against their offspring.

Outside the ladies' room are hordes of people, families with small children, many of them coming to see a papa or an uncle here in jail. Some folks are white. Most are black. They come in two styles, it seems: overly humble and defeated or loud and insistent. This world, she thinks, this country. How many people in this one town have done bad things—taken what they shouldn't take from someone, killed, tried to kill, sold death in the form of drugs. And after all this time being good, her efforts to keep her own nose clean and her boy's nose clean have come to nothing.

Three little kids follow her outdoors. They run in front of her and make a barrier of their bodies. They look like criminals in the making—their eyes, calculating, their expressions sardonic.

“You have any money?”

“Why?”

“We need candy.”

“Where's your mother?”

They point back. She turns to see a woman who looks totally dead in the eyes. This woman doesn't care what her kids do. One of them tugs at Elinor's handbag.

Speeches fly through her head. Begging is wrong. Work for a living. Don't expect help. Help yourself. You can do better. But none of these speeches take form. She is crying again. The tears that began upstairs are only the beginning. There are buckets of tears behind them. Her face vibrates with the need to cry and cry.

Elinor reaches into her bag and pulls out a five.

A boy of about four practically rips it from her hand. Before the kids have run very far an older sister takes the money from the boy. The second oldest, a girl, begins pulling at the older one.

Elinor owns a car, Toyota Celica, which she takes good care of. She drove it to work today because she knew she wanted to make this quick trip downtown to the county jail and didn't want to tangle with buses. It was a mistake. There is a parking ticket on her windshield.

What else?

The Celica is tough like she is, clean, too, well kept. It hums into power, ready to go. She'll have to find a place to park it back at the Connollys' so that it doesn't block the driveway where valets will take the cars of the people coming to dinner. The huge and wonderful dinner.

Her people are going to want to take food home—that is easy to predict. They will look at the untouched food and get a little crazy. When the time is right, she will turn her head.

*   *   *

AT THE DINNER PARTY,
Connolly becomes the great connector, introducing people who don't know each other, making golf dates, lunch dates—all of them to be firmed up when someone's secretary calls his secretary on Monday.

The TV is on in the family room/bar inside. Most people drift in, watching the Steelers. “We're ahead. Can't lose this one,” one woman says. She's married to an upper-level guy at PNC.

“It's only preseason,” her husband reminds her.

“It counts. It's psychological,” she says with conviction. “Gotta win every one.”

“That's my gal,” he laughs.

Monica looks good. She's had her hair done and wears a new, elegant sundress that she says is inspired by
Mad Men,
very retro, very sixties, a flattering look. She takes his arm, pats his wrist, moves through the crowd. He has done her wrong. She wants out and she doesn't even know the worst of it.

His father carefully works the crowd—gesturing toward the back garden, getting people to sit, acting easy. “I loved living here, too,” Connolly hears his father say. Then the talk turns to Chatham University, its elegance. Only in the quick blink of a glance does Connolly see his father's determined concern that this last week disappear, that the future he has wished for be allowed to happen. One of the caterer's servers, a beautiful young woman with deep black hair tucked back in a braid, tendrils of curls sneaking out to frame her face, comes up to him with a platter of tapenade spread on thinly sliced bits of baguette. “Thank you,” he says to her eager offering. They look at each other a second too long.

Sick, he makes himself sick. He loathes himself.

That gesture Monica made, arm through his and then the pat of his wrist with her own extended hand, it almost felt real, it almost felt as if she loved him.

He's heard of men who disappear. They go off to be monks or something. Take a bit of cash and start a new life. As he smiles and talks to people, he plays out this fantasy.

No, he wants to be governor. He has ideas. He's built the base. He would be able to do wonderful things. Die with a highway named after him. Or a road. Or a building.

*   *   *

COLLEEN HAS MADE
clam linguine. And a salad. Potocki has opened two snack tables and put them in front of the sofa that faces the TV. He still doesn't have a lot of furniture, only the basics: beds, sofas, TV, and a few tables of various sorts. The condo has a clean spare look—a divorce look. He's having a beer. She's having red wine, preferring it to white, no matter what the meal. She brings in the platters of pasta, putting them down on the tables to go back to fetch the salad. “It isn't a classic football meal,” she calls out.

Football. Seems to call out for meat, blood. He's pleased that she's willing to watch. It's what he would do if he were alone, but now he has the double treat of the companion of his choice plus the game. He's feeling good.

In Washington there are hordes of Steelers fans. The stadium is awash with yellow towels waving in the air.

How great it is to put everything aside, all the things you're worried about, and just give in to the contest that doesn't really matter at all but only seems to.

Everybody symbolizes. If the Steelers win, our case goes well, if the Steelers win, our relationship goes well. Has anybody done a study? Who knows if there mightn't be a connection way under the surface? A scary thought in many ways. He does know that crime is up—particularly domestic abuse—when the Steelers lose.

“We ought to be able to beat the Skins,” one fan says when the microphone comes to him in a bar. “We rock.”

“We kill,” says the guy behind him, pushing into the camera.

“Ben isn't playing. I dunno,” says another. “Batch is good but Ben is
ma man
.” He points to his own number 7 jersey.

“What's Connolly doing tonight?” Colleen wonders aloud.

“He's singing, ‘What Do the Simple Folk Do?' He's wishing he had no problems and clam linguine.”

“Maybe.”

“We shouldn't think about work. We have to learn to put it aside.”

However, if they let Christie separate them as partners and then come together of an evening, they will be hungry to talk about work. How awful his last few years with Judy were—him holding everything in, her not caring or understanding.

The pasta is good.

Even when the Steelers fall behind, he doesn't care. He is so happy.

*   *   *

CAL GOES DOWN TO
the common area where everyone is watching the Steelers. There is this new guy on the team—trying out for it—that everybody wants to be. Logan. He makes it look easy the way he runs, slipping past everyone.
Getting away. Getting out.

Whoa, Logan, fucking Logan, see that Logan. You gotta see this. Wait, they'll run it again.

Sidney is playing chess again, watching the game with part of his attention. He has a worn, irritable look.

“We're going to lose this fucker,” someone cries out.

Sidney bites out, “No way we can lose to the Redskins. We'll pull it out.” He stretches back, thumbs his opponent away from the board. Sidney won. He always wins. He is running out of people who will play.

“I'll play,” Cal says.

Everybody who is watching the game hears, looks up, puzzled. Really, can the slow kid play chess? Is he like one of those geniuses?

Cal is a terrible chess player.

Levon is shaking his head.

“We play for stuff,” Sidney says. “What you got, boy?”

“Loser has to wear the gold watch on his calf.”

“Huh? What kind of offer is that?”

“My offer.”

The guard stops watching his TV and stands to hear better.

Sidney says, “Make a real offer.”

“Okay,” Cal says slowly as if thinking hard. “Loser has to wear the watch on his calf and take two candy bars off the hands of the winner.”

“What are you talking about, simpleton?”

“Taking on the burdens.”

Levon is shaking his head.

The Redskins score again, and that interrupts things for everyone. The Terrible Towels waver and collapse. When the fuss is over, Cal takes his seat at the chess table.

“Go on, play,” Boreski says. “Beat the shit out of him. We'll get the watch back tomorrow.”

“I'm done playing tonight.”

A couple of guys boo, and it isn't at all clear it has to do with the Steelers. Cal doesn't turn or look but begins setting up his end of the board. “I might need some help. I don't know if I remember all the moves,” he says.

“He ain't going to make it to death row,” someone says.

Most of the men go back to the TV, irritable and furious that the game isn't going their way.

Sidney makes a first move.

Cal stares at the board. He really can't remember the moves.

“What you think you're doing?”

“Playing for my watch,” Cal says. When he doesn't think, it's easy. Words just come out.

Levon has stopped shaking his head and is leaping around nervously.

“Boyfriend give it to you?”

“Not yet,” Cal says. He concentrates on the game and plays as hard as he can.

NINE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 23

THEY LIE ABED READING
the papers. She seems happy, really sprightly this morning, Potocki thinks, watching her.

His son is coming over today. Scott has met Colleen before, and even though he suspects she is more than a colleague, that is not a conversation Potocki has been ready to have with his son—one reason being that the relationship has been so off and on.

“You have Scott today,” she says, reading his mind. “I ought to go home and clean.”

“Cleaning can wait. How bad can your house be?”

“Bad enough.”

“Talk to me.”

“What?”

“What is this to you?”

“I think I like being alone.”

“You don't and I know it.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Oh, the great mind reader.” She twists to look at the clock. “If we're not going to work today—”

“What work? We have no new assignment.”

“You could dig up stuff on Connolly. We could go to the Sprint stores with her picture, Cassie's picture. Dolan says it's Sprint.”

“Dolan is doing that. Boss pretty much told us to take the day. It's okay to be normal.”

“Maybe it's just lazy. Anyway, I'm going to go see my folks. I haven't seen them in a while.”

“I could shoot your folks.” They both jump at the words that have popped out of his mouth, but he's angry with her parents, no matter that he hasn't met them.

“What are you talking about?” she grumbles, getting out of the bed.

“For what they did to you. Or didn't do.” He knows about how her uncle assaulted her. She was left to run through the woods for hours, frightened and lost, before making her way home—or rather to her uncle's place. Then the creep told his wife some lie, and the wife treated Colleen like a siren who tried to take her husband away. And Colleen, too afraid to tell her parents.

“I don't blame them for anything.”

“Why not? They were the parents. That's what a parent does—protects the young. That's the definition.”

“Well, I'll let you protect Scott today. You can protect him from me. I'm going home.”

“They dumped you with a pedophile because they just didn't want to know.”

“Easy answers. Easy answers. They were allowed to have a vacation. You're the one who goes on and on about people needing to relax.”

“Why are you turning me into the enemy?”

“I think you're being overly sensitive,” she says huffily.

“The fact that you never told them—think about it. You didn't trust them to be on your side. That's scary.”

Before he knows it, before he has his shirt on, she is dressed and gone. Her car door slams too hard. Just like that it's falling apart.

*   *   *

CHRISTIE ARRIVES AT
the Connolly house at noon. This time he studies the flowering bushes arching partway over the driveway. Trained on wire? Can he get this effect in his little Bloomfield garden?

He goes to the door, and again Elinor Hathaway answers. She's out of uniform. She wears light purple linen pants and a darker purple top. Her earrings are somehow these same two colors. That would take some serious shopping, he thinks. “How are you doing?” he asks.