Will Clemens discovered a way to wet his soap and slowly, so not to create a lather, get the bar to issue a slick, gelatinous sludge. He could use it with the comb of his fingers to scoop his hair back out of his eyes. When he first entered Woeburne two months ago, it was like being inducted into the marines. He’d been hosed, prodded, vaccinated, shaved, and barbered in a way that gave him a moon face, but now his hair was growing back.
At the start he was also given a sack of personal goods and clothing. Some of which were replenished on a regular basis by fat Pasteur—the housekeeper, they called him, the chief guard of cell block Kentucky, where Will and the other executives were housed. Every other Sunday, Pasteur delivered: one cake of pea-green soap that smelled like bacon, four washcloths, two bath towels, a miniature unlabeled tube of aqua-colored tongue-burning toothpaste, but no razors. Razors got a special treatment. Handles wrapped in masking tape, owner’s names written in Magic Marker, all kept together in a wicker basket under lock and key.
Every day, after the eleven o’clock head count, Pasteur escorted the eighteen men living on Will’s cell block to the john and brought the basket of razors with him. They shaved in silence, looking into the long slab of marbled mercury above the sinks. No talking allowed when the razors were in their hands. Once Pasteur had collected them, rinsed and wiped, in his basket, they were free to say something.
Will thought these precautions excessive for his group: the short-termers, the accidentals, the compos mentis deluxe. But Pasteur had trained with the mental defectives, which was the majority population at Woeburne. This was the designated stopping place for New York criminals whose first motive was an emotional disorder, not necessarily including malice. Some of the mental defectives were heartbroken. Pasteur had learned to be consistent in his methods, to be strict, and not to let any talking excite melancholy when a sharp edge was at hand. Razors were impossible to get, except out of Pasteur’s basket, but everything else, and certainly soap, could be bartered for.
Kentucky block was located on the upper-right tier, overlooking the central atrium. A glass and iron ceiling arched twenty more feet above, and through the haze of thirty years of accumulated muck, Kentucky was often radiant with filtered sun and stippled blue skies. The dirt functioned like a scrim and subtly patterned the light that came through. Will thought the artists had anticipated just that. The whole place had been built by Works Progress Administration artists during the Depression. Woeburne was filled with odd details. But the sound could be appalling. Rain sounded like an atomic bomb, and hail like shrapnel fire, and this was a bad thing for the veterans among the mental defectives, which were almost all. Will was a veteran. Stationed in Korea, after the peace, as a mail courier. He carried letters in a canvas sack by bicycle from the airstrip to the mail table at the tiny base camp. Sometimes he sorted it and put it in the correct pigeonholes, sometimes he was busy and stuffed it into a locker in the room with the weight bench and barbell, never used. No one ever complained. It was more relaxing not to have a lot of news from home.
Right before his discharge, Will’s sergeant was doing a few situps to get in shape before going stateside, and he opened one of the lockers, just by chance, and the mail cascaded all around his feet. This was only a minor problem. The enlisted men read their old letters like novels. Will almost wanted to suggest something like that here at Woeburne. Novels were in short supply, worse than razors.
Will did not want to read his mail. It was the contrast that killed him. The blue-gray edge on Kay’s notepaper, that’s what made him want to find a razor, want to get very melancholy and raid Pasteur’s basket. So he started a storage system. By chance, he procured an empty can from the mess where he worked—Persephone’s cherries, one of those wild brands that must sell only to prisons and locked-down institutions, because on the open market no one would buy them. Companies where the product names were cribbed from the homework of high school students. Persephone’s cherries were in fact red tasteless bulbs suspended in a sugar mulch. Brodie, the chief cook, liked to dump a few kilos into gelatin and call it dessert. But the label was even more perverse than the contents. A bent-over agrarian worker, clearly from nineteenth-century northern Europe, caught in a suspended wag of a backside like a cave entrance, huge and dark and U-shaped. This agricultural hussy had round hands like spoons with which she dug in a field. Cherries grow on trees. There were no trees on the label.
Will studied the huge brown-skirted backside. He would have put a single blossoming branch on side A, and on side B, the identical branch with fruit dangling, supple, ready for plucking. And maybe, but this might be pushing it, he’d put a dimpled hand reaching for, but not touching, the bottom-most dew-lapped globe. Illustrate desire. Better always than a fruit in the hand. But for now, into the existing can, Will consigned his unopened letters and his emphatic desire not to read them until he was out of here.
Most days Will’s job doing food preparation in the kitchen was so boring that the seconds multiplied and crammed into each other in such a way as to cause an explosion of unconsciousness. He was seized by the need to sleep. Outside the dry-goods pantry, against a back wall, pallets of canned food, clams in brine, ravioli, and fruit, were stacked ten feet high with access alleys in between. Just the cocoon of metal and wood, a little resting place, a man on the lookout might see. Will was not exactly indispensable. His schedule, as he knew from his brief time in industry, was counterproductive. He worked for about two hours, just getting into the rhythm of peeling carrots and potatoes for a thousand, when he was called for a head count upstairs, and the daily shave. He returned in time to serve lunch, leaving the vegetables to oxidize in piles, carrots turning leathery, potatoes brown. Back to Kentucky after lunch to be counted again. He didn’t return to the cavernous underground kitchen until two or later to finish off the work. By three o’clock, frustration with the shoddy quality of his labor made him crave sleep. The uncountable seconds and the stairs and the high dark brick vaulted ceiling all conspired. There, in between the pallets, he could rest.
There was a jokester at Woeburne named Sammy Finlandor who had a bit of a crush on him. Will was savvy about these things, knew all the signs from his stay in Korea. And he took a middle line. Loneliness likes attention, and Will was lonely. Sammy Finlandor looked at Will with eyes that watched and appreciated, and took in the wave of Will’s soaped black hair and the curve of his lip. Will felt a little better just to have a watcher. He trusted Sammy, a fellow exec, a fellow kitchen aide, not to give him any trouble. And when he slept between the pallets, he felt, as much as he felt anything, that Sammy might even warn him if trouble came by. He felt the wedge of insurance a bit of awe provided.
One day Sammy Finlandor was rinsing off the mountain of carrots and potatoes alone. This always took at least an hour, and by the time forty-five minutes had elapsed, Sammy was ready to renew the verve that watching Will Clemens’s wily hands slipping white lumps beneath the spray brought. This is how Will understood what happened, what he explained to himself later. Sammy said the devil made him do it. Made him tiptoe past old Chef Brodie’s dessert station, where red globs plopped into steaming vats of Jell-O, and made him finger one empty can of Persephone’s cherries. Sammy rinsed the pilfered item under the spray intended for potatoes, not easy to do unnoticed, because the can was the size of a portable latrine. He filled it up with water. On the highest pallet of clams in brine, Sammy deployed his joke.
He perched the can on the southwest corner above Will’s innocent sleep cove. Sammy attached a string to the toe of Will’s perfectly polished prison-issued oxford with rubber sole. He made a gentle incision in the rubber with a potato peeler, creating a flap that would irritate Will for the remainder of his stay. He tied the other end of the string around the horizon line on the label. The prank was only mildly successful. When Will’s dreams of ships tipping and rolling caused his own feet to mimic the motion, the can toppled, as intended, soaking only his socks and shoes.
Will carried the offending can attached to him upstairs to Kentucky for the four o’clock head count. He rolled the can under his cot into the shadow and stood in his doorway until Pasteur hobbled by, giving him the nod. Then he worked to detach the string from the nicked rubber sole. By the time he found a dry pair of socks and curtailed the damage to the polish on his shoes, Will could see a good use for the can. This was his chief strength, really, as Will saw himself. He had so many weaknesses, things he had to persuade himself not to ruminate on. In so many ways he was a terrible person. He knew that. Look at all the suffering he had caused around him. Like a pied piper of misery. But one good thing about Will: Given a moment, he could always spot the most elegant use for something. The simplest idea, always the best. And he could find it when everyone else was getting complicated and calling it thinking.
It had been a year, maybe more, since Rita had seen her grandson. She scanned back over that time for clues, things that might have signaled what had happened to him. That’s what the shock did. She loved Bo and was with him, but at the same time her mind flipped through past moments like a deck of cards: phone calls, canceled plans, odd tones of voice, strange weather, air smelling wet and decayed. All the clues that might have been there that she hadn’t noticed. And each possible clue had emotions like colors, said she could choose this one and run with it: anger, grief, guilt, fear. Anger again. She’d been deceived, over and over. But that was a gaudy choice to make.
Bo’s eyelashes had become transparent where they’d once been a sandy blond around his gray-blue eyes; now the white lashes were sparse and delicate. Blue veins traced beneath the nearly translucent skin of his face and scalp. She sat with him at a low green plastic table in the waiting area of the pediatric treatment clinic three floors below his hospital room. She smoothed out sheets of construction paper. Out by the elevators, Kay was in the phone booth, calling Roy. And Rita didn’t know why. Hadn’t he done enough harm? But she couldn’t get through to Kay. That was taking time.
Rita showed Bo how to cut a chain of paper dolls. And now he was the angry one, impatient. His white fingers wound through the purple plastic blunt-tipped scissors and cut wildly. Each time he finished a little stack of men, he’d snip the hands apart. He couldn’t understand how to keep the paper men together.
Here Bo. Look here, kiddo.
No. I’m stupid. Bo tossed the scissors. They bounced on the blue linoleum. His bloodshot eyes looked teary.
There’s a trick. We’ll do it together. Like this.
There weren’t any other children waiting. When Kay left to make her call, two little girls, both outpatients, had Bo giggling. Now Rita could see them through the glass barrier, inside, lying in leather loungers that looked like dentist’s chairs. Their mothers sat beside them, one read McCall’s, the other closed her eyes and chewed gum.
Rita picked up the scissors, made the gesture of dusting them off. Come on, baby doll. Bo let his grandmother put her worn-looking fingers on his, let her work the scissors through the folded paper with him. What happened to your skin, Meemaw?
I don’t know, sweetheart, here, here’s the place we leave alone so we keep the fold. That’s how they stay together. There you go.
Bo pulled apart a row of barrel-bodied men, four of them with flat heads.
Now you can color them any way you want. Rita pushed a bright yellow bucket full of peeled and broken crayons over to Bo.
Kay made her first try for Dan Dunlop, the finder-keeper, the man who actually got things done in Roy’s office, before seven this morning. Always in first, always available; today, for once, he was impossible to reach. So she hopped the 8:12 train to Manhattan anyway, with Rita and her suitcase. At every pay phone from the Red Bank train station to New York Hospital, Kay tried to get an answer.
She stopped pacing in front of the elevators and looked at the wall clock, 11:25. Bo’s test would be soon. Any minute, Hollis would stick her head out the door and say: Where are you! And then it would be a while before she could call Dan again.
But now some other melodrama was unfolding in the phone booth. Kay let a woman use the telephone, and she wasn’t giving it back. This made Kay furious. This made her throat prickle, like only a good scream would relieve the itch: This phone is for emergencies, not for conversations! She wanted to interrupt the subdued sobbing and say hurry, hurry, for godsakes, just hurry. You can do that at home. What would she do with Rita if Dan didn’t get them a hotel room? She couldn’t take her back to New Jersey. She needed to stay away from New Jersey for a little while, for everyone’s good.
The door peeled open on the booth, and the small woman in the cream-colored dress stepped out and blocked the entrance while she dug in her bag for a handkerchief. Oh, she said and looked up at Kay, searched her eyes. Kay stood as still as she could, tried to keep the recoil out of her face. She could not do this. She wouldn’t be the catcher for this woman’s heartache. Forget it. The woman found the handkerchief, blue-and-gray-striped, it belonged to a man. She put it up against her face like she was breathing in chloroform. Thank you, she said to Kay, looking down, thank you very much, and she stepped over to the elevator doors as if waiting, but didn’t push the button.
Kay moved into the booth, closed the door, sat down, closed her eyes, lifted the receiver, depressed the button with her wedding-ring finger, started counting backward from fifty, at thirteen she opened her eyes, dropped the dime, and began dialing the number of Roy’s office for the thirteenth time that day. Alice, the receptionist, picked up on the fifth ring.
Alice, Alice, Alice, it’s Kay Clemens, give me Dan, will you?
Dan Dunlop came on the line all nervous cheer: Kay, my girl! How’s everything? I’ll bet you have some questions.
Dan, I just need a hotel room for tonight, maybe longer, and I have Will’s mother with me.
Tonight?
Right, said Kay. She opened and closed the seashell clasp on her purse.
Um. Well. I’ll call the St. Regis. Just like before.
What do I do?
Nothing. Meet me there at five, how’s that? said Dan. Is that going to be all right?
Kay could hear someone in his office talking loudly. In her closed-in booth, with all the pebbled glass, it sounded to her as if someone were standing on a mountain and yodeling, the sound echoed and bounced in her ear: Dan, Dan, Dan.
Someone wants you. Is that Roy?
No. No problem. All right, five it is, glad to hear from you, Kay. Ciao.
Ciao, Kay said, good-bye, and she put down the receiver, sat for a moment, then pushed out of the booth. The woman in the cream-colored dress had vanished.
In the children’s waiting room, someone had kicked over the toy box. Kay stepped on a pink hollow cube and crushed it. Plastic pieces were scattered everywhere, banked up against the furniture. Did you do that, Bo?
No. The twins did it.
The twins?
Look. Bo held up a loop of orange cutouts.
Beautiful! Kay cupped Bo’s head with her hands, stroked the peach fuzz. You did that yourself?
Yup.
Wow. How’re things, Meemaw?
I think we’re doing just fine here, isn’t that right?
Bo nodded and pressed the men flat on the table. Colored one of the heads aquamarine blue over the orange. Kay took a seat at the tiny table, decided not to pick up any toys. Just like Lou-Lou, said Bo, coloring one leg forest green.
She misses you, guy. We’ve got to get you home to see her.
Hollis leaned into the door. Hey there, partner. We’re ready for you. Sexy, lovely girl, Kay thought, done up in her cowboy boots, a bright red sweater beneath the standard clinic smock. Today Hollis had made a special trip down from ten, Bo’s usual ward, to assist. The last time they’d tried this test, a lumbar puncture to check spinal fluid, he’d gotten so hysterical they had a hard time getting a clear result. Bo loved Hollis. They hoped he’d stay calm with her present. How we doing? Whatcha got there, Bo? Hollis straightened up and smiled at Rita, smiled perfect, even teeth, everyone was crazy about Hollis.
Rita tipped out of her toddler chair, stood up, found her balance. She glanced at Kay, you’re not going to like this, then gave Hollis the direct question. Give me the straight dope here, what’s the story with my grandson?
Oh, boy, do I see the resemblance, said Hollis, looking only at Rita, especially the eyes, and she smiled.
Just tell me, please.
Well, Bo is very sick, but we keep looking for ways to help. His program is experimental, anything that might make a difference, he’s first in line. Hollis paused, nodded, watched Rita’s face. Today is mostly a test, a marker to check for progress. We’ll take a sample of his spinal fluid, and while he’s under a local, we’ll give him vincristine. It’s a chemotherapy.
Rita looked back at Kay. It wasn’t much different from what Kay had said already.
Everyone here thinks a lot of Bo. I’ll show you some other things he made, later, if you like. Hollis pulled a plastic cap out of her pocket and began fitting it over her ponytail.
No, said Bo.
Kay, said Hollis, ripping open a packet of sterile gloves, could you give me a hand?
Come on, sweetheart, said Kay, she bent down to lift Bo out of the chair. He wrapped his feet around the blue plastic legs. Come on, honey, you’ve done this a million times.
No, said Bo, and he started to whimper, his face flushed and bright.
What is it? Rita asked. What’s wrong?
Hollis waved to someone down the hall, called out, Okay, then turned back to Rita: It’s the test, he doesn’t like it, no one does. Right, Bo? But we’ll be quick, and then it will be all over. You’ll see. Dr. Fred is waiting.
Bo was breathing hard and blinking back tears. Kay frowned and knelt down next to him, pulled him to her. Come on, angel, I’ll go with you, come on now. Bo looked into Kay’s face and she lifted him into her arms and stood up. Hey, ballet! She carried her small, beautiful son past Rita, past Hollis, to the procedure area down the hall off the main space. She would never forgive herself for this.
Dr. Fred followed her in. Kay, he said. Hello, Bo. Let’s see. He placed Bo up on the examining table. He held a penlight to Bo’s left eye, which had cleared, was looking better, much better, Kay wanted to hear. Looks good, pal. Let’s—see—the—other, ah, good. Dr. Fred needed a lot of room. He moved around the table to the back. Kay stepped aside, keeping her smile on Bo. Maybe you could wait outside, Kay? Nope. Dr. Fred inhaled. Okay. Hollis? Give me a gauze pad. Right there, in the left drawer. Thanks. He wiped his glasses, tossed the pad in the waste pail. Bo, could you let go of Mommy’s hand? Bo was shivering, said, I’m hungry. We’ll get you something good to eat as soon as we get back upstairs, Hollis said, I’ll call the kitchen. Bo, could you let go of Mommy and lie on your side for me? Good. Kay stepped around Dr. Fred to the head of the examining table.
The room was hot and smelled like too much disinfectant. Kay crouched lower so Bo could see her face without turning his head. Scissors soaked in a blue fluid just to her left. Just like at the barber, she said. Sweetheart, she said. Bo watched her eyes. Kay smiled at him, thought of a lullaby in her head. Dr. Fred lifted Bo’s pajama top and pulled the elastic on the trousers. Hollis? Dr. Fred said. Hollis got a sheet. Laid it at the foot of the examining table, shimmied Bo’s pajama bottoms off, then covered his legs. You okay there, slugger? Dr. Fred lifted the sheet to swab the skin over Bo’s lowest vertebrae. His spine was a little reef of bone. He was so frail. Kay looked into his eyes. Sweetheart. And Bo watched back. Frightened.
Hollis handed Dr. Fred the syringe, and quicker than Kay could change her expression, the anesthetic had gone into Bo’s hip, and he was shrieking. A burn flashed out under his skin, and she hadn’t warned him. Bo screamed, but Hollis had anticipated it, and she held his hips firm and rubbed down the muscle. They waited for the numbing to set in, then a second needle bored into the bone. Bo cried and said they were breaking his back, Hollis held him tight, Dr. Fred withdrew the plunger and the barrel filled with fluid. Bo screamed and Kay wanted to scream right along with him. She swallowed her horror and put her face down to his. Touched his cheek. You’ll be okay. Very soon. You’ll be okay. The hurt will stop in a minute.
The third needle was only a pressure to Bo, and his crying softened, his breathing settled. Hollis looked away, lifted her hands from Bo’s hips. It had been a clean take. Nothing had gone wrong. Hollis put a sterile strip on Bo and gently, carefully wrapped him in a cotton blanket. There you go. He might fall asleep, Kay.
Kay had her head resting next to Bo’s. Kay kept saying yes, yes. Yes, what? Hollis said. Let me get you a chair, Kay. Dr. Fred opened the door to leave. I’ll see you in a little while. Kay stood up, hand on Bo’s head, his eyes were closing already. Yes, thank you, she said. She would go crazy. She was crazy already. Here, Mommy. Hollis came back holding a red chair. Here, you sit until he falls asleep, and then we’ll move him upstairs.
Outside in the children’s waiting room, Rita said a novena straight to the Blessed Virgin. She had a small, creased prayer book pressed flat on the table next to the cutout colored-in men. Hollis brought Rita water in a paper cone.
On the sidewalk just beyond the entrance to New York Hospital, Mrs. Millstein, the Sabrette hot-dog lady, was open for business as always, even though it had been raining off and on all day. Kay relied on her.
Adorable dress. Mrs. Millstein waved her tongs at Kay’s blue linen. Such a nice girl, said Mrs. Millstein, nodding. She searched out a cream soda for Rita from the ice chest. In my location, I know.
You getting any customers in this mess, Mrs. Millstein? I’ll take a Tab, if you’ve got one.
See what I mean? A gem!
Oh! Oh! Wait! Kay yelled and leaped off the curb and into the stopped traffic on York Avenue. A Checker cab was dislodging an elderly passenger on the other side. Kay ducked in and out of four lanes of cars and made it to the curb just as the light changed.
She’s gonna get herself killed that way! And over a cab ride. Better to wait and take your chances, I always say.
Kay slapped her hand on the wet hood of the taxi as if to hold it in place. She waved to Rita. Come on!
Now, don’t you do what she did. Mrs. Millstein took back the cream soda. No charge, you didn’t open it. She pointed with the can. There’s the crosswalk, that’s what it’s there for.
When the light changed again, Rita crossed the avenue holding her small suitcase in her arms like a baby.
Inside the cab Kay directed the driver to the St. Regis Hotel and sat back in the seat just as it started to pour again. They were a little early, but not much. Rita patted down the dark fabric around her knees. She looked done in. A drink, a bath, a bed. Kay knew the drill. And the sooner, the better. Upstairs in Bo’s room, Rita had been perfect, lining up all the Snoopies for magic tricks and jokes. And when Bo dozed off for good, they tiptoed out, two leaden fairies. She’d get Rita squared away, then come back to the hospital in time for the test results. If she didn’t loiter, things got lost, delayed, Kay believed that still.
What kind of a name is Hollis for a Catholic girl? Rita gave Kay an anxious look.
You think she’s Catholic?
She told me, said Rita.
Well, she can call herself truck or pinecone or Achilles. She’s a godsend. She’s the best thing going in that hospital.
Rita nodded, leaned against the door, looked out through the downpour.
I’m sorry. Kay touched her hand. You know what? I think it helps her. It helps to have a strange name.
Rita patted Kay’s hand in return. You must be planning to visit Will on Monday.
Monday?
And I’d like to go with you. If that’s all right. I’d like to do that. Kay put her fingertips to her mouth.
His birthday?
Yes, of course. Kay nodded. But I’m not going. No. Will definitely wouldn’t want it.
That can’t be.
It’s true. But maybe we could try to reach him tomorrow. There are certain times to call. We could make sure to do that.
Rita said nothing and studied Kay’s steady eyes and then her profile and then, when she turned completely away, the back of her head. Rita looked at Kay, at the streaky blond hair, all sunlight even in this dismal old cab on a gray day, and felt she understood very little about this girl. Nothing at all, really, after all these years. They rode the next ten blocks in silence.
On Fifth Avenue, Kay checked her wallet for cash. Two days ago Jerry Henderson had called from the bank to raise a flag, that’s what he said, Just raising a flag here, Kay, just thought you needed to know. He would cover everything she’d already written, but she’d have to sell something. Just give him a buzz when she had her ducks in a row. The windshield wipers barely cleared the glass. Mother of God, said the cabbie. Did you ever see so much water?
The doorman at the St. Regis unfurled the tent-size umbrella over Rita’s bent head as Kay grabbed the bags. Here, she said, leading Rita to the first silk chair inside the revolving door, here, sit and dry off, I’ll see if our room is ready. Kay stepped across the marble floor to the gold and ivory front desk, manned by a tall, thin boy whose bad complexion made his lips crack in the corners. Kay looked to his eyes, away from the mess of his face, and said her name. He pulled open the register and sighed. I’m afraid not, Mrs. Clemens.
There must be some mistake. Perhaps Mr. Dunlop put the reservation in his own name. He called for me. He called to make the booking. Mr. Daniel Dunlop.
No. I’m afraid not.
But you aren’t looking.
Mrs. Clemens.
Perhaps Mr. Franklin, the manager, could help me.
Mr. Franklin will return next Monday and will certainly help you.
Kay read the name engraved on the gold band dipping from his lapel: Crispin Philpot.
Mr. Philpot, we haven’t met before, but I’m a frequent guest at the St. Regis.
Mrs. Clemens, you are not a guest of the St. Regis today. He turned away to fluff a waiting flower arrangement.
A small ring of pain began to throb behind her right eye. She glanced back at Rita, who slumped into the silk madrigals and reindeer. Kay had about fourteen dollars in cash. Her father was on a cruise on the Baltic Sea. Her husband was in prison upstate. Her son was unconscious in the hospital twenty blocks north. Her daughter was eating herself into a linebacker on the Jersey Shore. Her mother-in-law was losing her bearings in the lobby of a hotel run by a scarred teenager in his apprentice course on abuse of power. These inventories were not helpful. She pushed her wet hair off her forehead. I’ll be back, Mr. Philpot.
Kay knelt down in front of Rita and touched her knees, the hem of her dress soaked despite everything. Well, I’d hoped for martinis in bed. Rita patted her hand. But I think instead we might check out the cathedral. It’s only a couple of blocks away. And it will be warm and dry. In the meantime, I’ll find out from Dan what the snag is here.
Is there a problem? Maybe I could do something.
No. No.
Kay parked their bags with the doorman and gave him ten of her fourteen dollars. Lofted her cardigan above Rita’s head and sailed down Fifth Avenue until they gained the side entrance of St. Patrick’s. The vestibule was slick and dark and damp, but inside, Mass was already in progress. Incense spiraled down from the altar, the priest in plain green silks climbed the pulpit for the homily. Rita found a pew up close. Kay whispered that she’d return when she’d sorted things out and left Rita there. Outside, beneath the dripping eaves, she smoked four cigarettes and watched the rain pour down.
Now well past the appointed hour, Kay let the doorman battle the elements to get her back inside the St. Regis, where she hoped to find Dan Dunlop. The lobby was deserted, even Crispin Philpot had abandoned his post. A bellhop slunk into shadow and vanished. Then, in a distant corner, tucked away from the potential bustle of the entrance and front desk and elevators, Kay spotted one foot tapping, like the movement of a cat. A shiny black patent-leather loafer tapped away, visible just beyond the bounds of the high green sofa. She edged closer and craned around the velvet curve. It was Roy. Head wrapped in a pair of puffy earphones. He spoke in a whisper into a full-size microphone connected by a thick cord to a black plastic box in his lap.
What are you doing here? Kay touched his shoulder. What are you doing?
Kay. Darling. Roy pushed the plastic box and the microphone and the headset aside. Come and sit down. You’re here. Sorry. Listen, you’re here. Sit. Sit down. What do you think? Frank Reilly’s idea. Better than a pad and very portable. Where’s Rita? Roy waved toward the front desk. He stood and waved. Crispin Philpot rose up from behind the counter and scuttled across the marble floor. So, said Roy, tell me everything.
There’s a big problem here, Kay said.
Not really.
She looked mid-lobby to the frown looming toward her on Crispin Philpot’s face. Here he comes, she said, he’s not very nice.
How important is personality, really. When you get right down to it. Net-net.
What are you talking about?
Roy pointed to an alligator briefcase by his feet. Without a word, Crispin Philpot bent toward it like a lover. Kay watched him carry the case away and suddenly felt she would cry, almost like a sneeze coming. She touched the sleeve of Roy’s jacket, just to hold something. What is this? I’ve never seen anything like it.
Summer-weight angora. Esther’s idea. Itches like the devil.
Very bunny.
Don’t let Esther hear you say that. He glanced toward the wall as if afraid. He glanced at tall Crispin Philpot entering the service elevator with the alligator valise. Esther only likes to know I look distinguished. Anything else gets the wooden ear.
In general, Roy liked mothers. He liked his own mother very much, and he was partial to other mothers, gave them the benefit of the doubt. Almost always. There were probably some exceptions. But while Will was in this time of inconvenience, Roy had been making it up to him, sending little things to Rita Clemens, subtle things so she wouldn’t always know. And he’d covered a couple of—not exactly indiscretions, but lapses, for Jack Clemens as well. This was Dan’s job, and he was good with the details.
When Roy went to find Rita, he entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral through the chancel. It was an entrance not too many people knew about, mostly used by brides and clergy and actually inconvenient in the rain, but Roy used it anyway. Rita didn’t see him coming. Mass was over, and Rita was walking the stations of the cross. Marking time before some very graphic depictions of a very violent story. Roy didn’t really get the appeal. The Jews did it better, he thought. Installed directly in the blood cells. If you were looking for a good time on this earth, in this life, look elsewhere. He felt it in himself, but a lot of him didn’t believe it. A low-level conflict.
Poor Rita Clemens turned a face as wretched as anything carved on the wall. Oh Roy, she said. How could you.
Rita, dear. He gestured toward a pew. That boy, that mother’s son, convinced her to sit where he pointed. Just to give him a minute of her time.
All right, she’d listen to what he had to say.
They edged together, all the way in, close to the column, in full view of the altar and the acolyte in white surplice who snuffed each gold-tipped candle. Roy held Rita’s hand still in his own.
Mostly what he wanted to say was this: There was a vendetta, she knew what that meant. It was aimed at him, not Will, from high places, she knew who they were. As hard as that was to believe, it was true. And her son had done the right thing, resisted irresistible pressure, and in doing so, had taken a fall. This was not to save Roy’s hide, as some had suggested. His skin wasn’t worth a minute of Will’s time. Will had done what he did because he was a decent man who couldn’t be forced to lie. Roy would not forget. No matter what happened, even if he himself was in jail, as a lot of people were predicting, he might even say hoping, and for a lot longer than Will Clemens. Roy would not let this brave thing her son had done become a faded, forgotten memory. Did Rita understand?
Rita Clemens waited a long time before she nodded.
Bo was lucky enough to get Mrs. Westerfield for his first-grade teacher at Holy Cross. Although Bo had attended school for only fifteen full days, and it was June, he was still a favorite with Mrs. Westerfield. Lou-Lou knew that. If Mrs. Westerfield lined up her class in the yard at the end of recess, she’d take her eyes off the malcontents, the troublemakers, and say: Hello Lou-Lou! And how’s our Bo doing? Lou-Lou would always answer that Bo was doing very well, thank you. And Mrs. Westerfield would smile in a special way, a prayerful way, as if she were a saint showering down a few blessings on Lou-Lou, malcontent, troublemaker, to be transmitted to Bo, her brother.
Lou-Lou soaked up all the good attention she could get, but she knew—couldn’t help but know—that Mrs. Westerfield didn’t care for her half as much as she did for Bo. Lou-Lou had been transferred from Sister Charitina’s first grade into Mrs. Westerfield’s class two years before because Sister Charitina was getting older. She looked to be about ninety, and she had no tolerance for loud, obstreperous, joke-telling little girls. When Lou-Lou landed in Mrs. Westerfield’s lap, she knew she was in the right place because Mrs. Westerfield was so beautiful. Her beehive hair was salt- and-pepper-colored, she had strong crinkles around her brown eyes, and she was bone-thin, a wire hanger, with legs she twined around each other when she sat in the low chair during reading time. No one sat in her actual lap because she was too skinny. But Lou-Lou often imagined herself there, cradled in the plaid of her skirt, touching the hem. In reality, Lou-Lou was often in the corner, or out in the hallway, or waiting to see Sister Mary Arthur, the principal.
Lou-Lou was fat, or at least that’s what her mother said, and that was another reason Mrs. Westerfield preferred Bo, who was vastly underweight, just the way she was. Sometimes Lou-Lou wondered if Mrs. Westerfield was sick too, and the thought brought tears, tears that bordered on a drag-down kind of crying. She wouldn’t start because it would be very hard to stop, so if it happened during chapel, if she saw Mrs. Westerfield’s bony white hand touching the head of some good boy, Lou-Lou would lay her own head down on the pew in front of her and pray first not to cry and then to be thin someday so that Mrs. Westerfield would like her too.
When Bo started school, it was a big production. Mrs. Wester-field even got Mrs. Oates, the principal’s assistant, to watch her class on the first day of school so that she could talk things over with Lou-Lou’s mom, get to know Bo in a special way. But Lou-Lou knew Bo was just not that interesting. He didn’t talk much. He liked to make models but not paint them. He put decals on instead. In a fort situation he was useless, couldn’t build, couldn’t guard. He was good at card games, especially war and old maid. He was patient with clay, seldom squished things halfway through an idea. He had a good laugh, that was a very good thing about him, she had to admit, but still.
And now Bo had the worst attendance record in the entire history of Holy Cross School. And everyone loved him anyway. At least in the lower school, kindergarten through third grade. He was like a movie star. Sister Mary Arthur liked to lead decades of the rosary about him over the loudspeaker. She’d hitch on to the microphone like she was leading campfire songs: All right now, boys and girls, here’s one for Bo. The third-graders, Lou-Lou’s classmates, and the whole rest of the school all had to stop what they were doing and recite out loud, standing still beside their desks, hands pressed together, fingertips pointing to the ceiling. There were some kids who liked it, Anthony Hoffman, Catherine McCarthy, who felt they were doing some saintly stuff, but for the most part, Lou-Lou got slit-eyed, unhappy looks during these sessions and people didn’t talk to her much in the yard, besides Mrs. Westerfield, that is.
One day in January, Bo had been well enough to come to school. So at lunchtime their mom brought him in. Kay found Lou-Lou sitting on the end of the slide stuffing snow into her boots. What are you doing?
Nothing.
Why don’t you run around a little, that’s what recess is for. Did you drink your Tab?
Lou-Lou nodded.
Bo is with Mrs. Westerfield.
Lou-Lou scanned the play yard but couldn’t see them.
I want you to help Bo on the bus this afternoon, you have to take care of him, he’s never been on it before. Gert will pick you up at the stop because I have to do some bank stuff. Okay? Okay. And listen, if Rufus comes? You tell Sister Mary Arthur right away. He doesn’t work for us anymore. You are not to talk to him. I love you, run around a little.
Her mother’s car coat had a nice swing to it, like a bell, ding-dong, ding-dong, all the way across the yard to her Thunderbird. Her mother was thinking hard with her head down and forgot to wave. Lou-Lou put some more snow in her boots.
At a quarter to three Mrs. Westerfield arrived with Bo, leading him by the hand. Bo looked tired. His baseball hat was on crooked, and before she handed him over to Sister Barbara, Mrs. Westerfield straightened out the brim, pulled it tight on his skull. Good-bye, little soldier, she said, as if she wouldn’t see him again for a long time, which turned out to be true, then she kissed him on each cheek. Bo smiled and laughed, his good laugh. So even though Mrs. Westerfield was already halfway out the door, she had to pirouette, do an about-face. She ran back to Bo and swept him up in her arms and hugged him tight, a rocking, swaying hug with an extra kiss on the landing. She nodded a brief military nod at Sister Barbara, then disappeared. The class was speechless, Lou-Lou most of all. No one had ever seen Mrs. Westerfield pick up anything larger than an eraser, much less a child. Bo was the only one unmoved by this, he just smiled and waved at Lou-Lou: There she was! He shuffled down the aisle to her desk. Lou-Lou could barely remember her own name at the moment. Mrs. Westerfield. Mrs. Westerfield. Lou-Lou stood to give Bo her seat. Sister Barbara signaled her row. Lou-Lou went to the closet to collect her coat. She put on her wet boots. She felt like crying, but this was a bad place to start. When her class was ready to line up for the bus, she took Bo by the hand. He wasn’t wearing any mittens. She searched his pockets and found the blue ones. Here, Bo, she said.
Ann Louise Clemens, are you shopping for a detention? We can keep the whole class here until you finish your discussion. Then Sister Barbara let them go.
On the bus, Lou-Lou found an empty seat for the two of them near the back. She sat by the window because she wanted to look out and ignore people as much as possible. Everyone, especially the big kids, the fifth- and sixth-graders, stared at them getting on. Everyone always stared at them when they were together, she was fat, he was thin. Lou-Lou ignored them.
The bus started in silence, but then in an instant the shrieking began, yelling, screaming kids fighting, then someone, some big boy, took Bo’s hat. He tossed it forward and someone caught it and tossed it higher, up toward the front. Bo’s little bluish hands were up on his scalp. Oh, oh, he said, get it, Lou-Lou, and Lou-Lou looked ahead. It was Marky Kennedy. Hey Telly Savalas, he said, hey Yul Brynner, hey Easter egg, and Bo cried, and Lou-Lou sat still. She saw the hat, now all dirty with slush on the rubber-grooved mat of the aisle. The hat was smashed there, up near the bus driver. Marky Kennedy, star of the sixth-grade basketball team, kicked it back two rows: Hey golf-ball head, hey! What’s the matter with your brother, you eat all his food? Lou-Lou didn’t say anything. You eat all his hair? She kept still. Bo cried and cried, he was starting to cough with his crying, it was the bad dragging cry she tried to avoid always. Bo was crying. Ping-Pong head. Pool ball. Bo cried harder, then he was choking. Before Lou-Lou knew it, Bo was throwing up all over her uniform, all over her boots. His mittens were soaked and there was blood there, too. He’s sick! He’s sick! the big boys yelled to the driver. Pull over. And Lou-Lou held on to Bo’s head. Stop, Bo, she whispered, it was the only thing she said. And he kept crying until the police came and the ambulance and their mother.