Wednesday, August 2, 7:00 a.m.
Wednesday was Colleen’s usual day off. With Justine in the hospital and me tending to the parish, she was overworked caring for my nephew and definitely in need of a break. The boy ran continuously at full throttle like an Energizer Bunny on a sugar high, and since his mother’s admission, he’d refused to take a nap. There was no rest for the weary at the rectory.
Although Colleen offered to give up her personal day and come in to work, I assured her that I could handle things on my own for one day and told her not to worry. I, however, was completely out of my league and terrified.
I dressed and fed RJ early and sat him on a pew with several picture books in the glass-enclosed, soundproof “quiet room” in the back of the church. Iris Wells, a regular at morning Mass, agreed to stay with him during the service. She was in her seventies, a major donor to Sacred Heart Church, and a volunteer on bingo nights and at potluck suppers.
During the service, I could see RJ becoming more and more restless. He started to use his books as building blocks. During the Gospel, I heard a thud as his tower crashed to the floor. I watched Iris transform from placid grandmother, to overwhelmed helper, to panicked old lady.
Normally, offering Mass was a joyous experience and a highpoint of my day, but when RJ began using the pew as a balance beam, I got as nervous as a cat in the dog pound. I rushed through the prayer after communion, omitted the announcements, bid the faithful “go in peace,” and scrambled to Iris’s rescue.
When I thanked her, she gave me a weak smile, grabbed her cane, and hobbled from the church faster than I’d ever seen her move.
“RJ, what was that about?” I asked as I gathered his things. “You’re supposed to sit quietly at church.”
“I couldn’t, Uncle Jake, I was hungry. It’s not fair!”
“What’s not?”
“I wanted some of those cookies you were giving everybody,” he said stamping a red sneaker, “and you didn’t even give me one!”
How do you explain communion to a four year old? Clearly, the seminary had failed to teach me all that I needed to know. Back in the rectory, I gave him a glass of milk and a stack of Oreos despite Justine’s prohibition of sugary snacks. RJ wolfed them down, then plunged back into a funk about his mother.
I was worried too and hated being out of the loop. If she’d been admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital, I would have had friends and colleagues who could have checked in on her regularly. At the Cleveland Clinic, I knew no one.
We spoke with Justine over the telephone, but RJ’s behavior deteriorated again after we hung up. Out of desperation, I promised to take him to the Memphis Kiddie Park if he played quietly until lunch. The park had amusement rides designed for very young children. I described the carousel and miniature roller coaster. He nodded, said “deal,” and marched into the living room, which now looked more like a rocket-propelled grenade had exploded in a toy store.
When a young couple arrived for their pre-marriage counseling appointment, I guided them into my study and immersed myself in the welcome distraction of helping others. On the topic of love, I was merely a well-read consultant rather than a practitioner. I’d never been married, but had made enough relationship mistakes to write my own textbook on the subject. After they left, I returned a few phone calls from parishioners, paid a bill for the repair of the church roof, and signed a baptismal certificate.
I was feeling like a multitasking genius until I remembered that I still needed to replace the wax-stained altar cloths and spent candles, and insert new missalettes in all of the hymnals. As I considered taking RJ into the church with a box of Legos to finish my to-do list, he hollered, “Uncle Jake, I’m hungry.”
With further church duties on hold, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, lathered RJ with sunscreen after lunch, and strapped him into his car seat. My mother had taken me to the Memphis Kiddie Park when I was a boy and I wanted to share the experience with my nephew, but it was an hour-long drive.
To pass the time, I sang every children’s song that I could think of, then tried playing the “I spy a color” game. RJ soon tired of my efforts and resumed his relentless refrain of “Are we there yet?” By the time we arrived, my temples were throbbing and I would have traded my medical degree for two Tylenol. Not only did I not possess the parental gene, apparently I was not cut out for this particular kind of “fatherhood.”
We spent a couple hours and nearly all the cash in my wallet at the small amusement park. Although RJ was afraid to ride the child-sized roller coaster, he loved the merry-go-round and train, and rode the spinning teacups until I was sure he would throw up the cotton candy he’d devoured.
Standing at the exit gate of each ride watching my nephew’s grin, my mind kept wandering back to Justine and all that her loss would mean to RJ and me. There was nothing I could do for her now except pray. Things were in God’s hands and those of the Cleveland Clinic staff, so I fought off the impending gloom.
Idle time, the Devil’s plaything.
And watching young couples revel in their children’s excitement made me painfully aware of my isolation. Even though my own childhood had been rocky and the priesthood had brought me serenity in many ways, there was a part of me that would have loved to have had a family of my own and a more conventional life.
The final carousel ride seemed to last forever. I banished unwelcome thoughts from my mind and when RJ hopped to the ground and skipped back to me, I corralled him into his car seat and began negotiating rush hour traffic toward home, glad for the distraction.
My tiny human hurricane napped on the ride home, proving that there is a merciful God. By the time I finally got him bathed and into bed at night, I was certain that Colleen was sainted and couldn’t wait for her to come back in the morning. I collapsed onto my recliner, mindless and exhausted, and dozed off while watching an episode of CSI.
The cellphone in my pocket vibrated like an angry rectangular insect, dragging me back to consciousness. I muted the ten o’clock news.
“Jake, it’s Tree. You watching the Tribe?”
“No. I had RJ today and conked out.”
“I wish the damn Yankees were in town. Tonight, the Indians would have kicked their butts big time.”
I fought my eyelids downward drift. “So, what’s up, Tree?”
“Got a little follow up for my ace consultant and part-time police snitch. My rookie cop’s been pounding the pavement and geeking on her computer. She found another life insurance policy that Miguel bought on Pablo for fifty grand. That’s a total of seventy-five big ones. Definitely sounds like motive to me. He may have tried to avoid detection by buying policies from two different companies.”
My eyelids popped up. “Hold on a second, Tree. Aren’t there laws or rules about buying insurance on babies, especially from multiple companies?”
“Yeah, I wondered about that too, so I checked with someone in the business. He said there’s no problem as long as the parents have their own insurance. Miguel works at a union shop and gets a nice term policy as part of the job. And apparently it’s okay to buy policies from different companies if the second policy provides an advantage or different benefit. The first one Miguel bought on Pablo was whole life, the second term insurance. But the agent also said that most companies would have hesitated to issue any policy for a baby with cerebral palsy who’d spent much time in intensive care.”
“Well, Dr. Taylor said that although Pablo was premature and had a rough delivery, he wasn’t in intensive care long. Because he seemed fine, gained weight normally, and didn’t need any medication, they sent him home. It wasn’t until several months ago that the pediatrician noted developmental delays suggesting brain damage. When did Miguel buy the insurance policies?”
“Lemme check. Here it is. He bought them a couple months after Pablo was born, most likely before the pediatrician diagnosed the brain damage. That’s probably why no alarm bells went off. Heck, insurance agents get paid to sell stuff. And if Pablo had no symptoms or diagnosis, the policies were probably real cheap at that young age.”
“You can’t really blame the agent. If you or I applied for insurance with no known illness, there’s no reason not to sell us a policy, even though we might be developing early cancer that only becomes apparent months later.”
“Wait a minute. Pablo appeared okay for a while after he left the hospital? That makes me wonder if his brain damage is the result of abuse at home, not birth trauma. I’d love to speak with the agents who sold those policies, see what they knew, but I can’t.”
“Because of the shady way you got your information, Tree?”
“Yeah, yeah, not exactly textbook, except the evidence all points to the parents. My finely-tuned detective senses are tingling, but the damn judge balked again at a search warrant. Guess I’ll have to keep Nancy Drew pecking at her keyboard and see what else she turns up. Did you talk anymore with Mom and Dad? I could use more ammo to convince Her Honor to grant me a warrant.”
“Mom was working. I did have a real interesting discussion yesterday with Dad. I’m still trying to make sense of it.”
I recounted my conversation with Miguel.
“Drunk is no surprise with Daddy. And a crying baby? So what?”
“SIDS babies die in their sleep, Tree, not when they’re awake and crying. Also, it’s strange that the baby monitor wasn’t on. And why was Tina already in his room if Miguel was the one who found Pablo unconscious? When I first met them, Tina told me she had been the one who’d discovered that Pablo wasn’t breathing. None of this adds up.”
“Conflicting stories, now we’re getting somewhere. Damn, I need that search warrant soon, before they wipe their computer clean and rabbit out of town to some other state like they did after the first child died. Maybe I’ll bring those two in for an interview, crank up the heat, and see if they boil over. Thanks for the info, Jake. I’ll keep you posted.”
I turned off the television, trudged to my bedroom, and plunged into a bottomless sleep, floppy babies whirling through my dreams.