The Best Thing for You (42 page)

Her sentence was imposed the following April, on schedule, without appeal.

John, his father’s old secretary said, with genuine warmth. I almost didn’t recognize you.

Johnny! Mr. Hammond said. My God, you’re a monster.

Five foot ten, Foster said. How are you, Miss Craig?

Five ten! she said. And you’ve had a birthday, too, I think.

Back in March.

Fifteen years old, Miss Craig said. I can remember holding you on my knee.

You’ll embarrass him, Mary, Mr. Hammond said. And I believe he’s here on business. I won’t have you embarrassing my clients. Hold all my calls and send my appointments away.

All right, Mr. Hammond, she said, laughing and at the same time running a finger down the page of her big book. Four o’clock is your next.

Send them away, I tell you, Mr. Hammond said, glancing from his wristwatch to the clock on the wall above Miss Craig’s desk, which said twenty after three.

Mr. Hammond had the office next door to the one that had been his father’s. Foster couldn’t help glancing in as they passed. A young man with a heavily Brylcreemed quiff of black hair was pitching intently into the phone.

That’s Laster, Mr. Hammond said. Is what he rhymes with. He’s doing fine.

He shut the door behind them and gestured toward a chair.

It’s strange being here again, Foster said. Everything looks smaller. I know I’ve sat in this chair a hundred times –

Spinning round and round, Mr. Hammond said. You made yourself throw up, once. You were about five.

My dad was here a long time.

Yes, Mr. Hammond said. Yes, he was. From the bottom of his file drawer he pulled a fifth of rye whisky, poured a shot into a paper cup, and took it into the hall, where Foster heard him top it up from the water cooler. He came back and shut the door again and sipped and grimaced.

At first I was able to help him out a lot, Mr. Hammond said. Little mistakes, little errors of judgment. Later it got harder to cover for him. He changed, too, over the years. He never used to take things so personally, your dad. By the end he felt sorry for everybody and it was pay, pay, pay. He stopped even going through the motions of investigating claims. You’d have thought this Pass girl was his own daughter.

Foster cleared his throat.

I’m surprised it took you so long, frankly. To come see me. I was a little hurt. I thought maybe you didn’t trust me.

It wasn’t that.

Mr. Hammond crumpled his empty paper cup and fired it over his shoulder, expertly nailing the trash can in the corner of the room. Foster told him about the job his mother had got, shelving books at the local library. She had also become obsessed with the variety, economy, and nutritive value of meatless soups.

Cassie, the older man said, laughing.

I just couldn’t come here, right away, Foster said. I had to wait until –

Mr. Hammond nodded.

– over, I mean, at least for –

Now Mr. Hammond was shaking his head, meaning the same as the nod.

You saw, didn’t you, Foster said. You went to see.

You know I did.

From the next room Foster could hear the young man who had replaced his father needling a client. Distantly a phone rang. Footsteps retreated to silence.

Dad was going to go, Foster said. He got permission and everything. Because of having to testify, and wanting to see it through. But he lost his nerve. That night was – well, I guess Dad probably told you. We all just sat there, waiting for midnight. You know my mother left the next morning?

Did she? Mr. Hammond said, very still suddenly.

To stay with her sister, in Toronto. My Aunt Trudy. She said Dad was more worried about a murderer than about his own family. She came back after a couple of weeks, though.

Mr. Hammond nodded. He looked over at the window for a moment, still nodding, then looked back and said, You’ve got your mother about you. He touched the corner of his eye and his bottom lip. Here, and here. I’ve always liked to see it.

Tell me.

What if I refuse?

Foster said nothing.

How are your grades?

Better, again.

School’s better?

Foster nodded.

You got a girl?

Foster shook his head.

You will. You’ve already got a type, am I wrong?

The phone on Mr. Hammond’s desk rang, but he ignored it, and after a moment it stopped.

I know what she had for her last meal, Foster said. They reported it in the paper. Chicken and rice pudding and tea. She wanted fresh strawberries, too, but it was too early in the season.
She had to eat her chicken with a spoon because they wouldn’t let her have a knife.

I read that too, Mr. Hammond said.

It had been a mild night, fresh and damp, and a quick drive through empty streets. A guard posted at the door of the jail admitted him. He had assumed it would take place outside, in a courtyard perhaps, but the warden led him upstairs.

They brought a man in from Ontario, the warden said. If you can believe it. I heard they’re paying him four hundred dollars.

His tone was bitter.

Would you have done it? Hammond asked.

I would not.

A dozen men were gathered in the hallway where the warden left him, a waiting area, he assumed. He recognized one or two faces from the courtroom – the husband’s family, he guessed – and the girl’s father, staring at the wall in front of him like a blind man. Others would be coroner’s jurors, more witnesses. There was a clergyman, too, and a man in a particularly fine, dark suit who kept looking at the elevator door. It was the first time Hammond had noticed the elevator; the warden had brought him up the stairs.

At midnight guards came and asked them to move a few steps farther down the hall. The man in the fine suit opened the elevator cage and Hammond caught a glimpse of the retrofit inside.

But how will they know when it’s over? the man beside him asked. If she’s in the elevator shaft?

There’s someone downstairs, another man said.

The doctor, a third said. The doctor’s downstairs.

Two matrons brought her in, followed by the warden. She wore a dark dress and matching shoes and her hair was newly set. The clergyman stepped forward and began to murmur to her while one of the guards bound her hands in front of her with
a leather strap. She looked at the assembled witnesses and for the first time showed signs of agitation, bringing her hands up as though to cover her breasts. The clergyman asked her to admit her guilt.

I don’t want him here, she said. Why does he get to see?

Her father didn’t turn his head when she spoke, didn’t move, and after a moment’s hesitation the men continued as though she hadn’t spoken. In the elevator – a large one, fortunately – her legs were bound together with another strap, and her face covered with a black hood. While the clergyman read from the Bible the hangman placed the rope around her neck and adjusted it. When he sprang the trap she fell hard.

Clean, a man near Hammond murmured.

The newspapers would report it took her just eight minutes to die, though they left her for the full twenty.

After the last prayers and formalities, Hammond walked home. It was not quite one in the morning. He had got a thrill from the pageantry of it, the ritual; the sickness he had felt earlier had turned fizzy, a sparkling in his chest and the palms of his hands. He had felt a similar sensation when he had seen the straps and the hood. He understood this was not a fetish. At a certain point it was simply overwhelming to be alive.

Through the window Foster saw a car speed by, shattering the silver puddles on the road.

Why did you go? he asked.

Mr. Hammond laughed and said, Why are you here?

There was a tap at the door. Mr. Hammond, Miss Craig said. It’s three fifty-five.

Thank you, Mary.

Foster turned away from the window. The big man was watching him, looking perhaps for his father’s sick anguish in him.

It’s fine, Foster said. I’m fine.

Mr. Hammond touched a few items on his desk, thoughtfully coaxing them into a finer alignment. He said, Well, I don’t know that it is. I don’t know that yet. Curiosity, Christ, I don’t blame you. You couldn’t have paid me to stay away. But I know you took things pretty hard, there, son, and you were a worry to your parents. I know that. Now I’ll be damned if I know whether I’ve done the right thing here. Probably not. You won’t tell your mother, now, will you, where you’ve been today? She doesn’t need this on top of everything else. Give me your word, now.

Foster gave his word.

Find a nice girl at school. Mr. Hammond pointed a thick finger at him for emphasis. That’s my advice. One step at a time. You’ll get where you’re going quick enough. No, don’t thank me. I didn’t do anything because you never came here at all, agreed?

Foster stood up and they shook hands.

I’ve messed you up now, Mr. Hammond said.

No.

Awkwardly, his father’s friend pulled him from a handshake into a brief, fierce hug.

In the waiting room Miss Craig was chatting with a young couple, newlyweds probably. They looked awkward and eager to please, the man in a stiff, ill-fitting suit and the girl in a tight dress and hat with a tiny, coquettish veil.

Won’t you please go right in, Miss Craig said, and the couple even smiled shyly at Foster as they passed him on the way to Mr. Hammond’s office. The girl, a blonde, smelled supremely of lavender. He smiled back.

How is your father? Miss Craig asked.

Foster was looking around the waiting room. He had met her here, the once, under the old slat fan – had it been turning? – had spoken with her, touched her hand. With an effort he dragged his attention back to his father’s old secretary.

He works in a department store, as a plainclothesman.

Gosh! she said, too brightly. Well. Well, you just tell him Mary wanted to be remembered to him. We all do miss him around here.

Thank you, Mary, Foster said. I’ll tell him.

In the hallway he could take the stairs, or he could take the elevator.

What are you working on?
she had asked.

As Mrs. Agostino predicted, he had not returned to his piano lessons, but had continued composing in secret, sounding his ideas out on the piano when both his parents were at work. The girl had never left him, but gradually his mercurial memories had hardened into stills. Those three last glimpses had become for him three attitudes of a religious icon: Anna the Sinner, Anna Agonistes, Anna Gloria. The girl and the work had merged in the delicate parts of his mind, until writing music had become his way – lush, private, barely articulate – of thinking about her. It would be an opera; it would make his name. Yet he had postponed any beginning firmer than sketches and a few general notes, knowing his talent was still too green. Sex, he would need to have had, and various other worldly experiences (he knew) before he would be ready to say in art everything she had meant to him.

The elevator dropped abruptly to his floor: red velvet, brazen gilt, black wrought iron bars. He opened the cage and stepped inside.

T
he door slammed behind her. Glitter of keys.

She spent the first few seconds arranging her clothes, retying the bow at her throat and straightening the seams on her stockings. They had rather rushed from the courtroom. She had glimpsed her father still sitting amidst the pandemonium, rock in the rapids, taking his medicine he would have called it. She was prepared not to see him again, old eyes gone dark with grief, waiting for her to take his hand. She was through with all that.

In those first moments, too, she saw the two insurance agents who had testified – the tall, thin sweet one she had met in the office in tired brown, and a slightly broader, shorter one in a suit of finest blue – shake hands with each other. The shorter one hacked laughter while the taller one bowed his head. They guarded the gates to someone’s world, no doubt, but not hers. She was to hang, within the year.

Stephen they had led away through a different door, after the verdict and the sentences were read. She thought he would be all right. He was young, he had wept in court, he had apologized to God and his mother, he had done very well. She wondered if they would let him keep the little note that had been their undoing, or what would happen to it now. She thought of asking
for it herself, to contemplate in her remaining days, but suspected they would deny any request of hers on principle.

Now, in her cell, she passed the time, as she often did at such between-times, standing with her back to the bars, eyes closed, face dipped, placing herself elsewhere: summoning in the cool underground gloom certain embers of sexual memories to warm herself over, or more often slipping into the plots of stories she had read, stepping through to those strange familiar rooms in her mind, and living there.

Later the sheriffs came to cuff her hands behind her back and lead her to a car parked in the alley behind the courthouse. When they threw open the alley door the light was blinding, daylight she thought, but her eyes would not adjust to the swarming brilliance of it. She hesitated on the top step while the photographers sighted her over the tops of their cameras, held up their silver flashbulbs, and called her name: a sound, to her ears, like a monstrous ocean, or the angry, wakening roar of applause.