The summer dragged on into the dog days of August and there was no break in the case or in the oppressive heat or in the intolerable state of Jack Donovan’s personal life.
They still had not heard from Rita.
Kathleen had returned to the South Side after living two weeks with her father in his small North Side apartment. She said she did not want to leave him, but he pointed out that she never saw her friends and his neighborhood was not as family oriented as it had been. He worried about her.
Even so, Donovan knew his daughter was not happy living back in her grandfather’s house.
He would discuss it with Lily, but the discussions never went very far; Lily did not want to talk about Donovan’s family or families in general.
“The kids are all right,” she’d soothe him. And he let himself be soothed.
And every day passed without a word from Rita. When the telephone rang, he thought it might be her. But it never was. He dreamed about her one night. She had come back home and they were all living in the first apartment they had rented, a long time ago. It was a stupid dream and it didn’t go anywhere but when he awoke, he remembered the dream with regret that he was not still asleep. And that the dream could not be true.
One afternoon he sat in his old office in the Criminal Courts building and talked to Mario DeVito about his situation.
As usual he had taken a seat on the windowsill; Mario DeVito, who was using the office, sat on the couch with his feet up on a straight chair.
Mario had taken over the day-to-day running of the criminal division while Donovan was attached to the special murder investigation.
“I want to talk to you about Rita and the kids,” said Jack Donovan. “I can’t let the thing go on much longer.”
Mario did not look sympathetic. “Why not? You’ve let it drag on for the last seven years.”
“Rita hasn’t been gone for the last seven years. My father-in-law is eighty years old. He can’t take care of the kids.”
“So?”
“So I got to figure out what to do.”
“What do you think you should do?”
Donovan looked up. “Are you leading me?”
“You brought it up, Jack.”
“I know what to do but I’ve lived alone for seven years. I’m in no shape to take on two teenage kids. And the boy hates me.”
“Who’s in shape to take on teenage kids? And boys always hate their fathers. Look at me. My Joey is fourteen. You know what he wants to be like when he grows up? You think he wants to be like his hardworking old man who goes out every day and catches the bad guys? No. He wants to be like his cousin, Sam Tosca. Tosca the hood. He wants to be a hood. Sam Tosca’s got money, Sam’s got good clothes, he drives an El Dorado. So I say, ‘You show Sam respect when we gotta go to a wedding or something, because he’s family. But you tell me you wanta be like Sam, I’ll break your back.’ ”
“That’s one approach, Mario.”
“Hey, Jack. You don’t know when your wife’s gonna turn up again. You got those kids living out there with your father-in-law because you want them outta your sight. You just wanna send them money now and then and go out to visit once in a while, say, ‘Hiya kids. It’s Dad. Long time no see.’ Well, fuck it. You know you gotta do the right thing.”
“But Mario, I’ve been living alone for nearly seven years.”
“So? I lived alone six years before I got married. So what? People do tend to be single before they’re married.”
Mario seemed impatient with the discussion. Or with Jack Donovan.
“How’s the murder case? When you coming back? This job of yours is work, man. I don’t give a shit for it. I want to get back to trial.”
“You wanna get some food? I haven’t been over to La Fontanella in weeks.”
“No. I’ve got to go back downtown.” Donovan stared at Mario’s shoes on the chair. They were scuffed.
“I can’t babysit every day,” he said at last. “I don’t think Kathleen would be the problem. She’s really terrific. She was cleaning up the house, shopping, got me supper. Very independent.” He said this somewhat proudly. “But it’s August. What do we do about school? Do I move back to the South Side?”
“It ain’t so bad,” said Mario DeVito. He had known Donovan for a long time and, from time to time, they had depended on each other. He knew all about Rita and the kids and the problems. “Lotta people live on the South Side. Not everyone moved to the fuckin’ North Side.”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack, this is bullshit and you know it. I’m gonna take the opportunity to tell you right now what the hell’s wrong, and wrong with you.”
“I appreciate it,” said Donovan. “I ask for advice, I’m getting the whole Ann Landers treatment.”
“Hey, get fucked, buddy,” said DeVito. He got up from the sofa, and went to the desk, and banged his fist on it. He stared at Donovan framed in the tall window. “Your fuckin’ trouble is you’re chicken. And you’re chickenshit, while I’m at it.”
He paused for breath. His face was red. “You wanna be a burned-out case, that’s okay. You wanna just work and go home and get drunk or get laid with that bull-dyke friend of yours, okay.”
“Nobody asked you to talk about—”
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth. You asked me. I don’t say nothing to you and you came here and you asked me. So I’m tellin’ you. You wanna be a private asshole, that’s nobody’s business but your own. You wanna go down to the South Side now and then and see Kathleen and do her that big fucking favor of your company, okay. But who the suffering fuck do you really think you are, Jesus H. Christ? You’re just another bum like me and you got a crazy wife, which is nobody’s fault, and you got two kids and everything is fucked up. Look at me. What am I? Is this the Sermon on the fuckin’ Mount?”
Mario decided to hit the desktop again and did.
“You think life is neat? You think you’re a submarine with watertight compartments? You put Rita here and the kids here and O’Connor here and Mario here and Lily here and you move from one to another like a zombie.”
Mario threw up his hands. “So Rita ran away. Again. So forget it. No, don’t forget it. Let it hurt you because it should. You loved Rita and you married her, so it should hurt you that she ran away. But cut the phony guilt trip. You figure you drove her crazy in the first place when you were a cop and she was trying to bang out kids every year like they were cookies. You know something? Maybe you did drive her fuckin’ crazy. And maybe she just doesn’t get enough salt in her diet. Who the fuck knows about anything?”
“You got to know,” said Donovan.
“No. You got to keep trying to know. You didn’t wanna be a cop no more because you couldn’t get on top of it, because you couldn’t understand what the hell was really going on. So, you became a lawyer and you still don’t understand what’s going on. None of us do. Not a damned soul on the whole fuckin’ planet understands what the hell is going on, and those who do are like Frank Bremenhoffer. They got it figured and they’re crazy.”
“Or like Rita.”
“No. Rita doesn’t know either,” Mario said in a quieter voice.
“So what do I do, Dago?”
Mario, flushed, smiled. “You stop calling me names for one thing. And you gotta do the right thing. You know that.”
“No.”
“Yes, asshole. You know what the right thing is. You know you gotta get those kids and bring them up and make them eat their fuckin’ spinach and when Rita comes home, you gotta help her just like you did the last time.”
Donovan smiled. “Fuckin’ spinach?”
“Sure. It makes your dick hard.”
Donovan got up from the sill. “I don’t remember you getting so mad before.”
“I was waiting until you really needed it. I figured you needed it now.”
“Dago bastard,” said Donovan.
“Yeah.” Mario patted his stomach. “Let’s get the fuck outta this joint and get some lunch.”
When Jack Donovan went home that night, he told Lily what he was going to do.
She said it was his funeral.