Twenty-Six

Downstairs, the window men had arrived, and Lemon was helping them hold panes in place with huge suction cups. Roz, looking as contrite as I’ve ever seen her, was scrubbing the kitchen floor with what looked like an assortment of paint scrapers. A mop and bucket stood in a corner. Her skunk-striped hair was wound in a turban.

“I’m just gonna stay on my knees,” she said. “I forgot about the locks. I’m sorry.”

I hate it when people apologize before I get a chance to yell at them.

“Hi,” Roz said to Cal, deftly changing the subject. “Do I know you?”

“I’m the ex-husband,” Cal said.

Roz’s eyebrows shot halfway up her forehead, but she didn’t say a word.

Tiptoeing through the glop, I opened the refrigerator. Cal followed me, stared critically at the shelves, and eagerly agreed when I suggested we grab a bite on the way to Mission Hill.

Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Square does good fried eggs, but Cal and I used to share them a long time ago, and I didn’t want any memories on the side. We bought Egg McMuffins in a bag at the drive-thru McDonald’s near Fenway Park. Not much to wax nostalgic about, but quick.

Mission Hill is an integrated zone in color-divided Boston. White residents tend to say they live near the Brigham, short for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the monolith created when Women’s Lying-In merged with Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Black residents say they live on the Hill. For a while the city tried calling it the Parker Hill/Fenway neighborhood in an attempt to improve its tone. Tucked between Boston and Brookline, with Roxbury its closest neighbor, the Hill has a bad reputation. I make sure my cab doors are locked before I take a night fare to the Hill.

“You drive yet?” I asked Cal as we made our way slowly up Huntington Avenue, dodging the trolley tracks.

“I learned, but I don’t have a car.”

“Automatic or stick?”

“Automatic.”

I don’t really consider that anybody who only drives an automatic knows how to drive a car. I said, “You in touch with anybody from the old days?”

“Just what I read about Dee in the papers. Denny lives in England, I think.”

“I’ve had a hell of a time tracking people down.”

“I’m not surprised,” Cal said. “I mean, we all ran away after Lorraine died.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Jeff checked himself into McLean’s. Guess he was afraid he might try to do himself in too.”

“I can’t remember Jeff’s last name.”

“Welch, I think. I wonder if he’s still alive. Drove his car into a cement abutment, I heard. Maybe he liked hospitals.”

I scooted around a slow VW, slid back into the right-hand lane.

“If Lorraine hadn’t killed herself,” Cal said with a sidelong glance at me, “we’d probably still be married. I’d have a steady job. Mild-mannered reporter, salesman, accountant. Maybe we’d have kids.”

I got caught at a red light, a yellow, really. I would have blitzed through, but the guy in front of me stopped. “You laying all that at Lorraine’s door?”

“Don’t you? I remember that week like I remember yesterday. Maybe better. The funeral home. All those yellow chrysanthemums. I remember thinking, if life can end in one minute—so damn quickly with no damn warning—you better do what you want to do now, Calvin, right this minute. Because your next minute might not happen.”

I was listening to Cal and keeping an eye out for potholes big enough to swallow my Toyota, but my mind kept swinging from Lorraine to Brenda, Brenda to Lorraine. One dead in a ratty apartment; one dead in a fancy hotel suite. Booze and pills. Pills and booze. And an injection.

“Dee ever use hard stuff when you were with her? Shoot up?”

Cal said, “I don’t think so. Half the time I was so whacked out, I’m not sure what anybody else did. I’m not sure what I did.”

I remembered Dee’s odd small voice on the phone, sounding so far away, saying: “I should have called the doctor. Maybe she was alive.”

Cal had me drive back and forth down Huntington, a challenge with all the potholes and trolley tracks. He did a lot of muttering, complained that he’d probably do better on foot. I drove the trolley route, stopping at all the train stops, asking questions. Do you remember this dry cleaner? This liquor store look familiar?

“Stop pushing,” Cal said. “It’ll come.”

He told me to take a left near Parker Hill Hospital. We cruised the one-way streets until we passed a gravel parking lot, a rundown playground, a housing project.

“These trees,” he said slowly. “I think I remember being with Davey, ducking behind these trees to take a leak.”

“These particular trees?” I said skeptically. They didn’t look remarkable to me.

“They smell bad. Ailanthus. City trees. You can’t kill them. They grow through concrete. Turn left up here.”

“Okay.”

“One of these buildings,” he said. “Something on this block anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Truly.” I maneuvered the car into a tight but legal slot. “Maybe this’ll help.”

“What are you going to do?” Cal said.

“Bump doors and ask if anybody remembers Davey.”

“You gonna hire an armed guard?” he said, glancing around uneasily.

“I’ve worked tougher neighborhoods than this,” I said, bristling.

“Yeah,” he said, “but today you look like you spent the whole night doing what you were doing. You don’t look like a cop.”

“Cops don’t screw?” I said.

“Don’t yell at me. Can I come along? Maybe I’ll recognize somebody. I think I’d remember this Malcolm guy.”

I’m not sure he really wanted to do it. I don’t think either of us had figured out a way to say good-bye. “I’ll call you” didn’t seem adequate or honest. “I won’t call” seemed hard.

He took one side of the street and I took the other. My side had three-decker weathered gray buildings with maybe a two-foot span between them and the sidewalk, enough for a brownish patch of grass, an occasional half-dead bush. Cal’s side was yellow brick apartments, bigger and built right up to the sidewalk.

People were hesitant to open their doors and I didn’t blame them. I inquired for Dunrobie through half-inch slits. I asked for Malcolm. I asked if there was a vegetarian commune in the neighborhood.

I finished the block with no hint of success. Cal and I met at the corner.

“You find anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“I know we’re close,” he said.

“I’ve got other stuff to do,” I said.

“How about if I keep looking?”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I know. But maybe it could count toward an apology.”

“For?”

“It’s one of the AA things. The twelve steps. Go back and apologize to the people you hurt when you were an addict.”

“You can apologize if it makes you feel better,” I said. “It doesn’t change anything.”

He walked away.

“Cal,” I hollered after him. “I would appreciate it. I would deeply appreciate it if you’d help me find Davey.”