The Ninth Step (10 page)

Late the following week, Edgar pulled one of Jane’s homemade TV dinners out of the freezer. It was frost-burned and looked not at all appealing, but he had neglected to shop for groceries, and he just didn’t feel up to the drive-through yet again.

The microwave got it too hot and the Tupperware warped. He used a hot pad to carry it to his desk so he could eat while he worked.

From outside, Edgar could hear a car door close and the car pull away. He opened his front door and found the usual casserole dish on the top step. The sight of it made him angry. He picked it up, reared back to sling it into the street, but then looked back over his shoulder at the meal he was about to eat. Pale turkey in scorched gravy next to discolored peas. The whole thing held in a plastic container melted into a scallop shape and leaching God knew what kind of chemicals into the food.

Edgar peeked under the casserole dish’s lid. Some kind of spaghetti concoction. Cheese melted to a crispy gold crusted the top. It looked pretty damn good. Edgar swept his eyes covertly side to side—as though making sure he wasn’t being observed in the commission of a felonious act—and took the casserole inside.

Day after day Edgar found different goodies waiting for him on his front step. He realized what a snobbish fool he’d been to refuse the earlier offers. If the woman felt compelled to do him some good service, then who was he to deny her that opportunity? He reasoned that she wasn’t actually trying to do something for him so much as she wanted to ease her own guilty conscience. By accepting the food, he was the one who was helping her.

Without realizing it, Edgar had undergone, quite literally, the same conditioning as Pavlov’s dogs. He now watched the clock every day, waiting on the delivery of his own personal Meals on Wheels. He always waited until six o’clock before opening the door, and, although he was quite unaware of it, his digestive juices started flowing about five minutes before that. And those juices were invariably rewarded for their Boy Scout–like preparedness.

He never saw the woman. And for that he was grateful. Grateful for the cushion afforded by the lack of familiarity. From five thirty until six o’clock he found things upstairs to occupy his time. Although he was sometimes tempted to peek through the curtain and observe the delivery, he was more inclined to preserve the fabrication of anonymity.

One day, a small, colorfully wrapped, cube-shaped object accompanied the meal. A small card taped to it said:
If anybody can do it… Helen.

Helen. So that was her name. So much for anonymity, fabricated or not.

Of course Edgar immediately guessed what would be under the wrapping. It was a Rubik’s Cube. Apparently, it was not even a new one. There was no packaging and the colors were already scrambled. He shook his head the way an adult does when a child makes a rude remark in utter innocence. Edgar had thus far avoided Mr. Rubik’s wildly popular little conundrum. He had always preferred boxes and puzzles that held a secret locked away inside them. A hidden compartment or drawer. The joy for Edgar did not lie so much in the solving, but in the discovery of the secret.

After he had eaten his dinner (fried catfish with coleslaw and homemade hush puppies—the meals had evolved from simple casseroles), Edgar nonetheless found himself drawn to the cube. It was a puzzle, and he was Edgar. Puzzles needed solving whether there was something inside them or not.

He picked the thing up and, frowning in concentration, began twisting it. Soon, he was lost in its rigid angles and bright primary colors.

It was five till six and Edgar sat on the edge of his bed fidgeting with the accursed cube. He hated the damn thing. It was unsolvable. He had begun to wonder if the woman, Helen High and Mighty, had sabotaged it somehow to get back at him for his puzzle snobbery. The colors on the surface were just plastic stickers. She could have easily peeled and reglued a couple of them in the wrong place. Probably drunk when she did it. Hadn’t she said something about being in recovery?

His stomach told him that it was now at least a few minutes after six. His dinner should be there, waiting on him. Edgar set the cube down and headed downstairs to the front door. He paused in the living room and fixed one of his charts—one corner had come loose from the wall and drooped over like a dog’s
ear. He assessed all of the charts for a moment. They had not changed much in the last several weeks. It wasn’t that he had lost interest, he didn’t think. It was that his mind seemed to be growing cloudy, almost befuddled. The Rubik’s Cube was case in point. If he couldn’t figure out a little brainteaser that schoolchildren—schoolchildren, for God’s sake—could solve in a matter of seconds, then how was he going to wrap his mind around chaos theory?

His appetite, however, was fine. Edgar opened the front door. His dinner was not sitting on the front step. His dinner was cradled in the arms of the woman, Helen.

They stared at each other for a moment, neither knowing the appropriate words to speak. Or perhaps they both knew it was better to not speak at all.

After a while, Edgar took the dish from Helen’s arms and motioned her inside.

Helen sat with Edgar on the wooden bench in the waiting area of the detective bureau. Edgar was holding large rectangles of poster board in his lap. They were multicolored bifurcation maps with areas clearly labeled
CERTAINTY
,
PREDICTION
, and
CONTROL
.

To Helen, Edgar looked exactly like a little boy waiting for his big moment at the elementary school science fair. She supposed that would make her the doting, overprotective mother.

It had been three months since he invited her inside to eat with him. She was just trying to be his friend. She didn’t know what else to do. He was so intensely alone. At the same time, Helen
was very much aware that she had befriended a man whose sole goal in life was to find the person who was responsible for taking Judy Woolrich’s life. And that person was sitting right beside him. That person had been eating dinner with him twice a week for the last twelve weeks. In a very real way, Helen realized, it was cruel. But she had come to further realize that any revelation on her part would not fix what was broken in this man. And he was now her responsibility. Fixing the broken part was her responsibility.

So, when he was called over to the detective’s desk, Helen (the hit-and-run driver that they were all looking for) watched Edgar make his way over to the detectives.

Edgar handed the first detective the bifurcation maps. The detective, a tall woman whom he had said was named Poole, took the charts and seemed to give them serious consideration. Helen could see Edgar pointing out aspects of them, trying to impart importance. After a few moments, Detective Poole folded the charts and slid them under Edgar’s arm. She talked to Edgar for a while, using her hands to make her points. Edgar unfolded the charts and pointed something out, and Helen already knew him well enough to know that he was frustrated that he had been unable to convey the possibilities hidden there.

She felt a sharp iciness in her spine when Detective Poole turned away from Edgar and looked directly at Helen. Edgar turned to follow the detective’s gaze, and then both of them were looking straight at Helen. Still staring directly at Helen, the detective said something to Edgar, and then they both looked away.

Edgar tossed his charts into the backseat, clearly unhappy with Detective Poole’s dismissal of their importance. Helen slid into the passenger seat. She watched Edgar climb in, sorry for his disappointment but also concerned that she had been a topic of discussion.

“What did she say to you?”

“She said that the case was dead. Not closed, because they don’t close unsolved homicides. But it’s inactive. That I should let it go.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Maybe she’s—”

“Don’t.”

“But when she looked at me. When you both looked at me, she said something.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? It was thirty seconds ago.”

“It wasn’t anything important.”

“Bullshit.”

“Why do you want to know so bad?” It was an accusation.

“You’re right. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m being stupid. It hurt. What she said made me hurt. So stupid.”

“What?”

“It’s just that she saw you sitting there waiting for me.”

“So?”

“So, I’ve never gone there with anybody before.”

“Oh. Okay. I think I get it.”

“All she said was: ‘It looks like you’ve got a friend now. Go with that.’”

“Are you ashamed to have a friend?”

Edgar shook his head.

“Guilty?”

Edgar’s silence confirmed rather than denied. Helen reached out to put a soothing hand on his cheek, but Edgar pulled away. He looked at her, and she saw the regret in his eyes. He reached out his own hand and lightly brushed her cheek. Without giving Edgar time to think or respond, Helen darted her head in and planted a chaste kiss on his dry lips.

“Start the car. Let’s go grocery shopping. I want to cook you dinner.”

Edgar pushed the cart, and Helen tossed fresh carrots, celery, parsley, and onions into it. She found a nice crusty French bread and threw that in as well. She grabbed some cheese, a box of crackers, tea, and other things she thought Edgar should keep on hand. At the butcher counter she found a fat chicken to boil for soup. When she went to place it in the cart, she found that Edgar had arranged all the food in a compact, interlocked design. He saw the look on her face and said, “You don’t have to worry about it shifting out of place.”

“You’re kidding, right? Please say you’re kidding.”

Edgar shrugged.

“Look, let go and let—I mean, damn, Edgar, just let go.”

Helen reached into the shopping cart and shoved the food items into disarray. She messed up all of the order, all of the Edgarness.

Edgar frowned at the lack of purpose strewn before him. He took the plastic-wrapped chicken from Helen, considered it a moment, and then dropped it into the cart with what he thought was nonchalance, but to Helen looked more akin to an agoraphobe contemplating a stadium full of people.

Helen said, “I feel like Annie Sullivan running water over Helen Keller’s hand.”

Edgar grinned. Then started to chuckle at himself. Soon it was genuine laughter, full and real.

It wasn’t Smitty’s Cocktails, but it was still a bar. Martha and Helen were sequestered in a dim booth to the rear. Helen had protested at the idea of going to a bar, but Martha simply said that it had been a long day and she could use a drink.

When Helen didn’t smile, Martha said, “Sorry, dear, old AA joke. They say you should avoid bars like the plague. They trigger drinking memories. Well, I like to feel comfortable. And where do drunks feel most comfortable? Whistle past the graveyard, I say.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re truly sponsor material.”

“I wonder that myself.”

“I’ve told you some pretty damning things, you know?”

“I do know. And I know what you’re about to ask me. So just get it out there.”

“The things I’ve told you. I mean, I’ve told you—”

The waitress appeared and tossed two cocktail napkins on the table like she was dealing a quick hand of blackjack. She propped her little cork-lined serving tray on her hip and cocked an eyebrow at her newest customers. That eyebrow seemed to say,
I’ve pegged you two for nontippers, but I’m going to take your order anyway, so let’s have it
.

Martha pulled a twenty out of her purse and laid it on the table. “Two club sodas.” The waitress meandered away in the general direction of the bar. “Club soda work for you?”

Helen nodded.

“All right. Down to business. What you told me, you told me in the confines of our AA relationship. I’m your sponsor. Anything you tell me in that regard is legally considered privileged information. The same as if I were your doctor, lawyer, or God forbid, priest.”

“You’re all three.”