A Matter of Mercy (17 page)

“Wait a minute,” he called, a good ten seconds after the restaurant door had opened and closed. He got up, tripping himself, and stumbled in a lurching run for the door. The air was heavy, wet and black, fuzzy around the lights of the marina. Few cars were in the lot. One set of tail lights took the sharp curve in the road that headed back up into the village. A truck pulled out of the lot across the street and headed the other way, toward Great Island. Rid ran ten yards, squinting, trying to focus on the license plate. He thought he had it. Was that a M or an N, MI 1 B, was that it? Or MIL 8? Massachusetts plates, for sure. But he didn’t even know if that was the right vehicle, though the truck wasn’t immediately familiar, as the fishermen’s were. Decals in the back windows, but he couldn’t read them, and didn’t even know for sure what color the body was. It could have been dark anything. Not too new, not too old, a Ford. Across the road, the shellfish warden’s shack was scarcely outlined. Behind it, the sea was one shade one more black, unfathomable, deceptively quiet tonight.

He hadn’t even gone back inside to settle his tab. Billy would be pissed off, but he’d also know that Rid would make it right tomorrow and he’d get over it. In dank December cold, Rid stood staring after the truck, repeating aloud—twice—what he’d thought he’d seen on the license plate, hurrying to his truck to write it down on a paper coffee cup he scrounged off the floor. He’d never even gone back to pick up his jacket, just left it in bar, a couple of hooks down from where the stranger had been.

He’d gunned his truck engine to life; he had to
do
something, but then couldn’t think what. He got to second gear following the truck that had gone toward Great Island, but stopped before he got up the hill. Was it a pistol? Maybe just a cell phone. How’d the guy know his name? Rid’s mind raced to every dead-end of a maze.

Finally, he’d driven to Tomas’ house, a small Cape Cod, similar to his own, except that Tomas’ was smothered in Christmas lights and wreaths. Marie must have hit a K-Mart going-out-of-business sale.

The pavement was getting slick, and so were the stones from Tomas’ driveway to the front door. The fog was turning crystalline, like so much spilled skim milk. Rid stood on the front step, shoulders hunched up around his neck, pocketed hands drawn up tight against his body, a good minute before knocking trying to compose himself. He hadn’t decided whether to tell them.

Marie swung the door open just as his knuckles were moving for the second knock. She stepped back to avoid being hit in the face.

“Hey, Rid. I see you’ve already had a few and you’re even early! It’s okay, though, we’re just finishing up. Mario’s here.” Tomas’ wife had put on weight since they were married, but she clung to her high-school style, which had been considered pretty. Rid found her intimidating. Now she wore a bright red sweater with a reindeer emblazoned on the front, and her earrings were little blinking Christmas lights hooded by long brunette hair.

“I know,” Rid said after a moment, disoriented by the earrings.

“You look like a deer caught in the headlights,” she said merrily. “If you drink any more, I’m taking your keys. The guys’re down in the basement.”

“I better not.” Then, needing it, “well, yeah, a beer, thanks.” He put his truck keys into her outstretched hand.

“Hold up, you can carry it down yourself. I’m not wearing my little white apron just now.” She went into the kitchen while Rid stood at the top of the basement stairs. He heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sound of a church key on a beer, and Marie reappeared with a brown bottle.

“Thanks,” he muttered, brushing the wall with his hip as he walked.

“You okay?” she asked. This was more solicitude from Marie that he’d had in the past five years. She didn’t appreciate it when Tomas went out for a beer, not that he ever stayed all that long. Rid wished her eyes weren’t so narrow, close together. She always looked like she was accusing him of something, no matter what her tone.

“Yeah.”

Marie reached around him and flicked on the light illuminating the basement stairs. “Watch your step.”

“That you, Rid?” It was Tomas calling from downstairs, in the rec room Tomas had finished himself in knotty pine. It made Rid dizzy.

“Coming.”

At first he hadn’t said anything, mainly because Mario was there and he couldn’t sort out if it would be a mistake. Then, because the two of them kept asking him what was wrong and because he had another beer after the first one Marie had given him, he tried to describe what had happened, taking pains to be exact.

“No shit,” Mario said. “I say we go blow up Pissario’s fuckin’ house once and for all.”

“Knock it off,” Tomas said, his parental voice. “Settle down. Think about it. You don’t carry a pistol in your hip pocket unless you want to blow your own nuts off. What’s this thing about monthly payments? What’s this about? Where’s the paper he put in your pocket? What’s it say?”

“Dunno.” Rid said.

“Is this about that chick at your grant?” Mario said. “You got her in trouble? She Pissario’s daughter or something?” His voice was an accusation.

“What?” Tomas demanded. “Who?” He slid forward, moving his beer aside, as if it were blocking his view of Rid. As always, Tomas was stone sober. Rid knew he himself was sheets to the wind, speaking too deliberately if anything, trying to hide it.

“What’s Mario talking about?” Tomas demanded again. His curly hair and beard—gray starting to mix in—needed cutting; he looked like some sort of wild mountain man, especially backlit as he was by an old floor lamp Marie had stuck by the kids’ foosball game.

Rid put his face in his hands, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He’d only meant to take a moment to put some words in coherent order, but his partners leapt to another conclusion.

“Man, you sold us out!” Mario shouted. On his feet, of course. The bozo hadn’t an ounce of patience. History counted for nothing with him.

Annoyed, defensive, apologetic. His mind was a mixed drink. “No way. No way. I didn’t know she had anything to do with Pissario. I slept with her once, way before the lawsuit, back in September. Never saw her after that. She just told me she’s pregnant. That’s the whole story. That’s the chick that was waiting for me on the grant the other day, Mario. She’s from over on the horseshoe beach, not up on the bluffs, but she owns property. That’s all I know.”

Tomas’ voice was a blade. “Let me see the paper in your shirt pocket.”

Rid pulled it out and handed it to Tomas still folded.

Tomas read it. “Is Terry DiPaulo the one you’ve knocked up? On Bradford Street in P-town?”

Rid’s face probably answered before his word did. “Huh?” Even Mario dropped back down into his chair, but Rid was too far gone to take much satisfaction in it.

“Terry DiPaulo. Is that her?”

“Never heard of her.”

“Well, that’s the name and address written here. The one he said you’re supposed to ’look out for.’ Goddammit, Rid, sober up. What did this guy say?” Tomas got up and went to the foot of the stairs, calling up. “Marie! Put on a pot of coffee, will you, honey? Make it strong.” He came back and paused at Rid’s chair, a beaten-up wicker piece, before continuing back to his place back on the threadbare tan couch, speaking to him the way he occasionally would to Mario or one of his children. “Rid. What
exactly
did he say?”

Rid tried to look around Tomas to the motley collection of posters, school pictures, and plaques lined up like uneven teeth on the wall behind him. Tomas stepped to the side to block his gaze. “Rid! Pay attention!”

A deep sigh. Oh God! Lizzie! He hadn’t fed her, he hadn’t gone home to feed her or let her out. He’d meant to go get her, and then been so upset he’d just come straight here. “My dog. I’ve gotta go. I can’t do this now. I forgot. She hasn’t been out in—”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“No, you don’t understand. She’s been in too long, I can’t.” Rid flashed back to the last time he’d done this, the night he’d spent with CiCi when this disaster was set in motion. He was humiliated by the memory and by the tears that came into his eyes.

“Rid, you can’t drive. Look….” Tomas’ voice eased off. “Give me your keys.”

“Marie already took ’em. I gotta get outta….” He started to stand, wobbled, and Tomas put a hand on his shoulder pushing him back down into the chair but not unkindly. Opposite him, on the couch, Mario muttered something under his breath.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tomas said, already lumbering up the stairs. Rid sat, faintly nauseated, his head developing a pain on the top and back.

The paper with Terry DiPaulo’s name lay on the nondescript coffee table, partly retaining its folds, like a white flower just ready to bloom or release its toxin.

Mario, for once, said nothing for a few minutes, then, “Look, man, sorry for what I said.”

“S’all right.”

Tomas reappeared with two mugs and a pot of coffee. “Marie’s gone to your house to get Lizzie.”

“Food?”

“She can have some of Copper’s.” Copper was Tomas’ beagle, an obese little barker the family doted on.

“Thanks.”

Tomas set a mug in front of Rid and Mario, each with a dull thud. He filled them with coffee and set the pot on a magazine. He picked up their half-consumed beers and set the bottles up on the window ledge, a clear message. Mario started to object, wanting his, and Tomas silenced him with a raised hand.

“Okay, Rid. Have some coffee. What does this Terry DiPaulo have to do with Pissario?”

“I don’t know what anything has to do with anything. I’m telling you, none of it makes any sense to me. I’ve never heard of that woman. The one who’s in trouble is a girl I knew in high school—named CiCi Marcum. Caroline. She didn’t even talk to me then, for God's sake. She does have a house on the horseshoe beach like I said. Lorenz said the landowners might get together. Maybe.…”

“That doesn’t explain the Terry DiPaulo thing.” Tomas said.

“Hold up! I got it. This Caroline chick is offering to trade. No support payments if we back off the lawsuit. Drop our opposition! The bitch is with Pissario.” Mario weighed in, excited, tangling words in his hurry to show that he’d figured it out.

“That … might make some sense,” Tomas said slowly, eyes half closed as he thought it through, one big hand on each thigh as he leaned back in his chair, “for your part, I guess. That you’d give up and get out.” He sat forward again. “Doesn’t really put any leverage on
us
.”

“Maybe it’s divide and conquer,” Rid offered weakly.

“Or he’s got some other goons with plans for us. Just haven’t shown up yet. Bastard,” Mario spit the word. He was agitated, his face reddening as it had since grade school when he wanted to fight. His eyes glowed red-black, as if caught by a camera’s flash, a combination of the strange lighting in the room and his excitement. Rid’s own eyes were burning and irritated, as if the room were dense, although only Mario was smoking. That was why they were downstairs. Marie’s rule. Rid wanted to lie down. He laid his head back against the top of the chair, dared to close his eyes.

Upstairs there was a cacophony of barking and a scrabble of feet. The basement door opened and Lizzie took the stairs in a series of implausible leaps. Rid almost couldn’t grasp that she was there before she was on top of him, knocking him backward, the comfort and familiarity of her long-tongued kisses, wide, hard tail swings that would have cleared the table of beer bottles had Tomas not already done so. Copper followed in his waddling run, baying.

“Oh man, here’s a headache announcement,” Mario said irritably, plugging his ears. Rid leaned forward and let Lizzie wash his face, his hands caressing and scratching behind her silky earflaps as she did, their ritual of mutual affection.

“Okay, okay. Copper, shut up. Rid, you’ve got to focus. Both of you. We have to figure this out, you hear?” More than anything else, the desperation that crimped the edge of Tomas’ voice frightened Rid. Tomas, smart, educated Tomas who never lost control. It wasn’t what he was saying. It was how he was sounding, just like Rid himself. Like he had no idea what to do.

Chapter 17

The third time she called them in two weeks, the police took thirteen minutes to get to Caroline’s house. They called her “ma’am,” and the younger one pointed out that she likely was mistaken as the windows were hard to see through just now. They looked like throwbacks to summer, trellised with blowzy white roses of salt and ice. “Maybe even it was a deer. They won’t hurt you,” he’d patronized, infuriating her. The older one rolled his eyes and adjusted the brim of his cap. “We’ll be taking off now,” the young one finished, adding, “just call us if you see anything else and we’ll swing by.” They were starting to act like she was a charity case: pathetic, alone, hormone-driven to lunacy and someone they simply had to humor as a part of their regular rounds.

“I
know
deer
won’t hurt me,” she’d said sharply. “
People
hurt
deer
, though. They track them, and then they put them in the crosshairs of guns and pull triggers.” She sounded hysterical, even to her own ears.
Shut up, just shut up
she said to herself.
You’re making it worse
. “All right. Thank you for coming by.”

The older one, a five o’clock shadow extending to eight o’clock now, and puffy bags under his eyes that made him look hung over, took mercy. “Ma’am, we’ll keep an eye out, you know. Patrol. We’ll cruise the area.”

Was he mocking her? “Thank you.” She kept her tone neutral in case he wasn’t. The porch and yard lights were on, as was the light over Eleanor’s studio door. She knew—or thought she knew—that someone was stalking her, if stalking was the right word, but the police never arrived in time. There were noises on her telephone line as if someone were listening, thumps against the side of her house, footsteps on the porch. Someone ran up her driveway, she was sure of it, but the police asked if it might have been a neighbor, and it could have been, how would she know it wasn’t? One morning, someone had scrawled something on the windshield of her car in the frost, but by the time she got out there, the sun had melted enough of it that she couldn’t read the words.

The police didn’t come for over a half hour. By then, there were only circles of clear glass with long wet droplets running from them like tears down cheeks. “Shoulda moved it into the shade,” a cop she’d not seen before said. He looked to be in his late twenties. Were they all babies? Caroline could tell he was disappointed. Maybe he’d hoped to find her dead next to the car, his chance to break a big case and make a name for himself.

“You said you’d be right here,” she snapped, “and not to touch anything.” She must look like a wild woman, she realized, brushing her hair back off her face, on which she’d put no makeup. She wore a makeshift, mismatched, uneven maternity getup topped by a field coat of her father’s, and her mother’s boots because the driveway was a mess of mud and slush where the gravel was too sparse. She really needed to have a load delivered in the spring. A lot needed doing. Not that she was doing much herself right now. She had a hard time keeping her thoughts in a straight line these days. She was terrified, dead tired from paranoid wakefulness, and didn’t recognize her own body. Just yesterday, a clear liquid had leaked from her breasts and she’d panicked until she remembered she’d read something about that.

I am losing my mind,
she told her mother after the detective left and she drank a cup of tea at the kitchen table. The sun that had made a fool of her, erasing evidence while she cowered in the house, streamed benignly through the kitchen window onto the dishes in the sink, hardening egg yolk remains to an impenetrable crust. She was making herself eat well, but cleaning up after it,
not so much
as her mother used to say.

“I know it,” she said aloud, answering Eleanor as she often did. Just then her mother had told her,
You can’t go on like this, CiCi
. To get through Christmas—where she had to make an appearance at both Noelle’s and Sharon’s, neither of whom would hear of her being home alone, was going to require a major pull-together effort.

Elsie. She’d call Elsie, even though it was embarrassing to seem so crazy, so out of control. Even the police didn’t believe her any more.

Just Elsie’s voice seemed to stitch Caroline back together. “Sure, I can meet for dinner,” she said. “I’m in Orleans today, though. It would be late before I could get up there.”

Caroline hesitated, considering the earliness and totality of nightfall as it would surround her house. The winter solstice was tomorrow. “I’ll come down there. I’d just as soon get out of Wellfleet. Would you be done by five if I come down there?”

“Should be. We could go to The Seascape.”

“I know where it is. Sounds fine to me. I’ll be there at five, and if you’re running late, don’t think a thing about it, I’ll just wait. I know how these things go. I remember how often Mom and I made you late!”

“I’ll try to be on time, dear. See you later. I’m glad you called.”

Caroline didn’t even replace the phone on the wall. She immediately called Noelle. “I was wondering if I could stay in your guest room tonight? I’m … uh … spraying for ants and I don’t want to breathe the fumes.”

“Goodness, this time of year? Well, I’ll send Walter over. You know, the man can take care of anything.”

“It’s not necessary, really! I promise. It’s not a big deal. It’s my fault. I left food out.”

“You know you always have a place here.” Her mother’s friends had been reliable as calendars, unswerving in their loyalty. She’d not confided in them, not about the pregnancy, the stalking, or harassment. They’d either think she was in danger or, like the police, that she had an overactive imagination. She couldn’t bear to be the object of pity, although when she looked in the mirror she saw that she
was
pitiful, bedraggled as a flower dropping its petals.

Help me, Mom,
she whispered.
Help me.

* * * * 

Ninety minutes later, she’d showered and washed her hair, changed into the best-fitting outfit she could muster—black elastic-waist pants meant for a Yoga class, a kelly green sweater of Eleanor’s over a white blouse, both tops loose over her hips. In the neckline, a wide gold chain, also her mother’s.
Okay, okay, okay
, she said to her reflection.
Makeup. You can do it.
Foundation, blusher, eyeliner, mascara.

Better. She definitely looked better. Encouraged, she finished blowing her hair dry. Yes.

Good. Keep going.
Was it her own voice or her mother’s in her head? It didn’t matter. She liked to think it was her mother.
Find a decent looking coat. No, not the old goose down jacket, and definitely not your father’s barn coat. Yes, try that one. Good, that’ll work. No. Not those. Put on the low-heeled black dress boots. They keep the streets and sidewalks clear in Orleans. Much better. You really need to unpack your own winter things, you know. And buy some maternity clothes.

A last check in the full-length mirror in the downstairs bedroom, once her mother’s, now hers, opening the cape-like coat to check the outfit again. She straightened her shoulders, and poked at her hair a bit. She tried on a smile and it looked real. A canvas bag holding pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, clean underpants, enough to get by overnight at Noelle’s, was on her bed along with her purse. She fished out car keys and draped the straps of both bags over her shoulder.

Ready? Ready. No more of this shit. Time to take hold, you hear?
I hear. Caroline smiled for the second time. It must be her mother. She knew her by the swearing.

* * * * 

Elsie wasn’t more than ten minutes late, but Caroline had been twenty minutes early to Orleans, so it seemed a long wait. She’d nursed a pot of tea while wishing for a glass of wine, and kept putting off the hovering waitress who obviously thought Caroline had been stood up on a date. “My friend is coming, I’m sure,” Caroline said. “But I’ll look at the menu. I’m fine, really.”

Elsie came in with a sweep of dank night air. Dark had completed itself while Caroline waited. She waved from the corner table, seeing Elsie scan the near-empty restaurant for her in the low light.

“You look a lot better than the last time I saw you,” Elsie said, appraising her frankly even as she was settling in the seat opposite Caroline. “How are you feeling?”

Caroline sighed. “I’ve been going out of my mind to be honest. Insane. That’s why I called you. I just thought if I could talk out loud to a normal person about what to do, it would help. Not that I can’t go to my mother’s friends—I can, but they’d freak out.” Caroline smiled. “On my mother’s behalf. I’ve got to sort things out, you know? I need a listener.” Why was it so reassuring, Caroline wondered, that Elsie’s clothing was utilitarian, a navy blue pants suit today, with fur-trimmed snow boots. Her straight brown bob bore the marks of the hat she’d worn. Caroline had never seen her with make-up.

“I’m glad you felt you could call.”

After they both gave their dinner orders, Elsie arched her eyebrows at Caroline, a silent invitation to talk.

“I’ve been floundering, and I realize I can’t do that anymore,” Caroline said.

“Have you made
any
firm decisions?” Elsie unfolded her napkin and opened a package of saltines.

“Yes, I have. I think I’ve decided.” Caroline laughed. “Sort of an oxymoron, isn’t it, to say you’ve made a firm decision and then start the sentence with ‘
I think I’ve decided
.’
Okay. I’ve decided I’m having the baby and I’m keeping it. Her. Or him. To raise myself. That’s as far as I’d gotten for sure. Then I got derailed by this stalking or harassing or whatever is going on. I’m terrified, Elsie, but nothing has actually happened, you know? I don’t know if it’s some kid, or what. But I do see that I can’t go on like this. I called Mom’s friend Noelle and asked if I could stay there tonight.”

“Did you tell her why?”

“No. I lied. I told her I’d sprayed for ants and didn’t want to breathe the fumes.”

“But you did tell her you’re pregnant?”

Caroline winced. “Not so much.”

“How about telling her at all?”

This time she covered her face and spoke from behind her hands. “Not so much at all.”

“Hmm. So these people, your mother’s friends, are your only local support system and you haven’t told them anything.”

“That would be about right. Well, I sort of have another friend, at the library. But that’s a really complicated situation and I can’t really count her.”

“Why not?

“It’s too much to go into.”

Elsie searched Caroline’s face and evidently decided not to pursue it. “You need some people around you now,” is all she said. “And I think you need to deal proactively with whatever is happening, trust your instincts. If you feel like there’s danger, there probably is. What do the police say?”

“They come, I haven’t been dead when they’ve gotten there, they haven’t found a crime going on. I think they have me pegged as a crazy lady, and they only come because they have to. But I think someone’s been on my phone line for weeks now, and I think someone’s been in my yard and I don’t know what he—or they—want.” As Caroline ate her chowder, she told Elsie the details of the obscured writing on the windshield of her car. “Maybe I’ve made it worse for myself. You know, looking a wild wreck when the police come. I finally cleaned myself up to come here tonight. Elsie, it was like I could hear Mom talking to me. Do you think that’s nuts?” Caroline’s titter was small and nervous.

Elsie reached across the table and took her hand. “You are not crazy, Caroline. Can you think of
anyone
, anyone who might have a problem with you, who might want to hurt you? Or want you to leave town?”

Caroline paused. “I hardly know anyone anymore. Everybody loved Mom. I grew up here, but….” Elsie didn’t know about the accident, and Caroline hesitated. How could this be connected? She wasn’t even using the same name. She didn’t look the same. “The baby’s father might not want me around, and it seemed like this started the same day I told him. But too fast. I even thought I saw someone in the yard when I was walking back after I told him.”

“Could you have been wrong that first time and right about the times since then?”

Another pause. “I don’t know. I guess.”

Elsie pointed to Caroline’s chowder. “Your chowder’s getting cold.”

Obediently, Caroline took a spoonful. The chowder clams were tender, dense in the soup. “I wonder if Rid supplies this restaurant,” she mused. “I think he makes deliveries down here.”

“I take it Rid is his name?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t like my telling you. His name’s actually Ridley. I went to high school with him.”

“But you think he might be capable of trying to run you out of town? He reacted that badly?”

“He got pretty upset. He thought I wanted money, I think.”

“But you don’t.”

“No.”

“What
do
you want?”

Caroline played with her soup spoon, took another small bite to stall for time. She wiped her mouth and looked around the restaurant. Real fishnets, wooden buoys, lobster traps, wooden plank floors, votives on the tables.