I woke up thinking of Molly’s eyes—that momentary flicker I’d spotted.
I drove to her estate without calling first. She wasn’t home. No one answered the door, but I spotted a gardener mowing the back acres. So I frittered the day away, billing clients, stopping in at the Gaddy Associates office, debating whether to call Liz or Hank but realizing I had nothing to say. When I drove back to the Torcelli estate late in the afternoon, I spotted a new gray Volvo in the driveway with the vanity plate: MOLLY2. The hood was warm to the touch, telling me she’d just arrived home.
Susie answered the door, called Molly, who became agitated. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I hope you don’t mind me stopping in?”
She looked flustered. “I feel like you’re gonna tell me something bad.”
“No, Molly, no,” I said quietly. “I just wanted to follow up on a few things.”
“Come in.” She turned to Susie. “I’ll go over that list with you later.” She smiled at me. “Susie and I just got back from Springfield. The traffic was horrible.” She looked distracted. “We’re doing a luncheon.” Then she paused. “I’m sorry. You’re not here to hear about my day.”
She motioned for me to sit down.
“I won’t take a lot of your time, Molly, but I was wondering about something. When I was here with Hank, I asked you if you knew why Mary went into that neighborhood. I thought I saw a moment’s hesitation—I don’t know, a bit of fright in your eyes.”
She parted her lips, and then closed them. “You have to be kidding.”
“That’s why I drove back out here.”
“Then, frankly, you wasted your time. Your question took me off guard, I have to tell you, but I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do. Maybe you did see fright, as you put it. The day after Mary died I made Larry drive me to Goodwin Square, where I’d never been, stop for a minute at the yellow tape. I was trying to see for myself what was there. Trying to imagine Mary there, standing outside her car. The why of it. I hated it—that sordid neighborhood, boarded-up buildings, street thugs. When I cried, Larry took me home. It was a mistake going there, he told me. Foolish. I shouldn’t have gone.”
“It’s natural. I went there, too. With Hank.”
“But it’s etched on my mind now.” Her eyes watered. “When you shot the question at me, it was like a bullet to the head, Rick. I was suddenly there, right there, with my dead sister. If you saw fright or fear, whatever, you got a good eye because I was looking at the photograph in my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
A thin smile. “You shouldn’t shock people like that.”
I got up.
“I know you’re trying to make Hank’s mother happy. I’m glad. But don’t do that to me again.” Leaning forward, she touched my elbow, a quiet reprimand.
I felt like a little schoolboy back in the bleak Saigon orphanage, caught by the scary nuns in some foolish boyish prank. Molly had turned the tables on me. Buddha: A man has within him the child he must always be. Before I apologized again and reverted to knee-jerk childhood sputtering, I took my leave. I held out my hand, and she took it. “I know you’re grieving.”
She sighed. “I’m learning how to be an orphan.”
The line struck me as strange and obviously wrong, and I almost said, “I know firsthand.” But I’d already overstayed my welcome.
Susie was outside, a plastic bag by her feet, a light sweater over her shoulders despite the heat of the early evening. She was going home. Standing in the shadows, out of the sunlight, she smiled at me.
“I met your son Danny at Tommy’s.”
She lit up, eyes bright. The haggard face, wrinkled and pale, metamorphosed into a doting mother. “Ah. My handsome boy.”
“I was very impressed by him.”
“Everyone is.”
“A banker.”
“At Bank of America. Someday he’ll be president.”
I grinned. “Of the United States?”
She giggled and punched me gently in the side. Then, on reflection, “Nothing is impossible for him.”
I waved good-bye and headed to my car. In the rearview mirror I saw her checking her watch, looking down the long curving driveway.
Stopping for gas at a Mobil station a mile away on Main Street, I spotted a sleek Mercedes stopped at a light, and noticed, by chance, Danny in the driver’s seat, the young man still in his summer suit, the sunglasses now over his eyes. The dutiful son, picking up his mother? Fascinated, I followed, circled the small road that led up the winding hill to the Farmington estate, and waited, idling in a cove of boxwood hedges and Hawthorne trees, concealed from the street. I didn’t have to wait long. The ice-blue Mercedes floated by, quiet as snow on a lawn, and I trailed at a careful distance.
Danny drove with a kind of sensual nonchalance, his body slumped into the exquisite leather, his head slightly cocked at an angle. Even from the distance I could see that he and his mother were having a lively conversation, and the body language suggested laughter and ease. At one point, at a light, Susie threw back her head, and I imagined her laughter.
Danny was in no hurry to get home, and cars passed him, making it more and more difficult for me to trail him.
He turned onto a side street off New Britain Avenue in Elmwood, not too far from Tommy’s ramshackle apartment. South of the avenue, small Cape Cods and 1950s ranches, neat as pins, with postage-stamp yards filled with flowers, plastic statuary, and the occasional Virgin Mary in half a claw-foot bathtub. Sloping garages and dated carports. The old post-World War II neighborhood for returning veterans who found available housing—electricians, plumbers, carpenters, firemen, police. A decent neighborhood. Now it was heavily Hispanic with a smattering of blacks, and a few scattered homes occupied by Vietnamese or Chinese families. Some old-time whites who still mowed their lawns with manual push mowers while wearing their VFW caps.
I got close enough to write down the license plate number, and when the Mercedes slid into the one-car garage behind a modest home, I jotted down the house number. I drove past but circled back to see Danny walking into the side entrance with his mother. He was carrying some bags of groceries as well as a briefcase. They were still laughing at some personal joke. Bizarrely, I thought of my mother and the slim book of life’s wisdom in my little breast pocket: A mother bears a child and the child becomes her shadow. Buddha still talks to me—as does my mother. I had a mother who still lingers at my side. She watches me from the shadows. It’s just that I can’t remember what she looked like, no matter how hard I try.
I called Hank on his cell phone.
“What?” Impatient. In the background a rumble of loud voices, pans banging.
“You went in to work?” I was surprised.
“What do you want?”
“Did you know that Danny drives a Mercedes?”
“You called to tell me that?”
“But did you know?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. He’s a goddamned banker, for Christ’s sake.”
“And he lives in Elmwood with his mother in a small nondescript Cape Cod, a little run-down.”
Hank grunted. “What a detective you are. Living with his mother while working at a bank is how he can afford the Mercedes.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Some detective.”
“What are you doing?’
“I’m busy dicing bok choi for the uninformed masses. If I’m lucky, I get to chop off my finger. I’m happy that you’re spinning around town trailing folks as they wend their way home from work.”
“I stopped at Molly’s to ask about that look in her eye.”
He roared, “You’re kidding. Did she boot you out?”
“No, but I almost brought her to tears again.”
“You have that effect on people, you know. There are times you drive me to slobber like a farmer who’s lost his last cow.”
“What?” Static on the line. The shrill cacophony of a frantic Chinese restaurant kitchen, the swish of a fired-up wok, the slamming of cleaver against helpless chicken parts, the babble of fast-paced Chinese dialect. “What does that mean?”
“I was trying to be clever.”
“You didn’t tell me that Danny lived in Elmwood.”
Hank yelled, “I didn’t know. I hate to tell you this but I don’t really know Danny. I’ve met him over the years, but that’s it. Other than by glorious reputation.” I could hear more yelling behind him. “They’re telling me I’m being paid to work. I gotta hang up. Why don’t you go follow someone else?”
“Why?”
Static, sputtering, and the cell phone went dead.