Ghost Country (19 page)

Harriet’s irritation deepened: she hated feeling like a supplicant in a client’s office. It was typical that clients waited for her as she whirled from meeting to meeting, not for her to sit looking as bedraggled as an immigrant from a cleaning service while Palmetto made her dangle her heels.

She pulled her mobile phone from her purse and began making calls. When Palmetto finally emerged she was too engrossed to notice him. After a lengthy discussion of the exact meaning of paragraph seven, section two, of the Illinois Commerce Commission’s opinion on waste haulers’ liability for road contamination, she put the phone away, and affected to see him for the first time.

“Gian! Been waiting long? I’m sorry—but I had to shunt a lot of people to one side to come here, and everyone seems to be feeling the same urgency about their problems today. Must be the weather, making us all edgy…. Now, what’s the story on this garage wall? Why has it become such a focal point for action?”

“Damned if I know. We’ll get Brian Cassidy to meet us down there. He’s the night manager at the garage, but he should be over in the operations room—he usually gets here at three-thirty for a briefing before his shift.”

Brian Cassidy was glad to meet Harriet, hoped she’d be able to get this problem resolved. God knew he wasn’t eager to attack women, even crazy bag ladies, but this broad—excuse me, Ms. Stonds, this—gal—was seriously getting under his skin.

Like Hector, Harriet noticed Cassidy’s muscles straining his jacket sleeves. Mara had said this morning that Cassidy knocked her over, slammed her head into the wall; thinking of that, Harriet’s mood toward her sister veered again. Poor baby sister, getting beaten up by a monster. Mara was big for a woman, but no match for a gorilla, which is what Cassidy looked like, short forehead over small blue eyes, snub nose lost in the expanse of round red face.

“My paralegal tells me you’ve been hosing the wall down every night. That isn’t discouraging the woman?”

Her voice was crisp and cold, like shaved ice, and the garage
manager fingered his tie, wondering if it was crooked. “She runs away until we’re done, then she’s right back there, lighting qandles, carrying on like she thinks she’s in church. All these homeless people down there get on my nerves, they watch you from the shadows like spooks, but this crazy one is the worst. It’s hard to run a garage down there with that kind of shit—excuse me—disturbance going on all the time. Women hate it most—we had a major complaint last week from one of our best customers.”

“Madeleine Carter is loitering,” Harriet said calmly. “We ought to be able to get her picked up any time she camps out here.”

“But that doctor who was here last week, he—I guess he was trying to give her an injection and get her to leave—but at the same time he said the sidewalk was public property, we didn’t have any authority over her if she was on the sidewalk.”

Harriet smiled. “I wonder who this doctor is. Would he want me giving his patients medical advice? The sidewalk is not hotel property, that’s true. But Carter is still loitering, and can be made to leave. Let’s go take a look at the space, while she’s still in jail.”

Harriet had called the state’s attorney before leaving her office: they were letting Madeleine and Luisa cool their heels for a few days. Luisa had been slugged by a sister prisoner sick of listening to “Sempre libera” echoing down the corridors outside the holding cells. The state was trying to have Madeleine admitted to County, but might not be able to swing it. Harriet didn’t bother her client with this information—if the state’s attorney couldn’t force Madeleine to accept hospitalization, Palmetto would spend the rest of the summer wanting to know why Harriet didn’t do something about it.

Brian Cassidy led the way to the service elevator. When they reached the street outside the garage entrance Harriet suddenly felt nervous, wondering if Mara might have returned to the garage. Her sister would think Harriet was spying on her; her cheeks would puff out in that ugly swollen way and she would create a scene in front
of a client. To Harriet’s relief, there was no one at the wall, neither Mara nor any homeless women.

From Brian Cassidy’s words, Harriet had pictured a little enclave of people in cardboard houses and sleeping bags. Instead, the sidewalk was filled with homebound commuters. Harriet was surprised—she lived in a world of limos and taxis and never thought about how most people got to work. Brian Cassidy pointed at the bus stop on the corner: three city routes started there.

When she asked where all the homeless people were, he took Harriet down an alley near the east end of the garage. They walked underneath an entrance ramp for Lake Shore Drive. An old wooden crate, slats torn randomly from its surface, was wedged between a pair of low-lying pylons.

“Our woman sleeps there some of the time. And there are some of the others.”

Cassidy flicked his flashlight on a heap of blankets, like a zoo curator showing a snakepit to a visitor. After a moment Harriet saw the rags move, and realized that what she’d mistaken for an extra rag was actually a human head. She turned sharply and walked back to the garage.

The roadbed overhead seemed to press down on her. The street wasn’t dirty, not in the sense of being filled with garbage, but the gray walks and walls, the absence of daylight, made her feel as though she were walking through grime. A dull buzzing seemed to fill her head. She spoke loudly, trying to assert herself against the pressure of the underground world.

“Can you show me exactly where this woman comes? Is it to the same place every day?”

Brian Cassidy went over near the crack. “I think it’s about here.”

He shone a flashlight around the area; Harriet saw bits of wax on the sidewalk, the residue of the woman’s little altar. The smell of urine made her blench. She pictured Mara on that filthy ground, singing her idiotic chant, and backed away in distaste.

“Is there something about this area that makes it attractive to Madeleine Carter? Does the proximity to the garage give her greater access to lucrative panhandling? Or is it a feeling of greater security?”

Brian Cassidy said it was probably a good spot to beg, but Nicolo, the garage attendant, who was hovering in the background said, “No, boss. She never beg for money or nothing. She sit here because this—this hole. She think hole special, blood of Mother of God come out this hole.”

Harriet hadn’t noticed the crack in the wall. She took Brian Cassidy’s flashlight to see it better. It was just a break in the concrete where rusty water oozed out.

“How do you know?” the hotel president asked Nicolo.

“When we taking people’s cars, or now, when boss telling us, wash this wall, she cry. She put fingers so”—he stuck his hand into the crack—“then into mouth, and tell everybody, here is blood of Mother of God.”

Harriet recoiled from the red on Nicolo’s hands. “That isn’t blood, is it?”

Brian Cassidy laughed. “No, ma’am. Probably rust. Must be some pipe in there leaking a bit.”

“Cement it over,” Harriet said. “The wall is your property: you don’t have to leave it open like that if that’s what’s attracting her. Break up the box she sleeps in. There are plenty of shelters in the city to give her a bed: you don’t have to. Keep someone from your security force down here to escort her away if she comes back. If she persists, call the city and have her arrested.”

“And you guarantee your sister won’t come back to create a bigger disturbance?” Gian Palmetto said.

Harriet’s shoulders sagged. “I can’t guarantee anything about Mara. But if she’s loitering here or creating a disturbance, you don’t need—the fact that she’s my sister—” She couldn’t get the words out and finally settled for saying, “She needs to learn that her actions have measurable consequences.”

“As long as she doesn’t bring the media in,” Palmetto said. “I can’t afford the negative publicity of looking like I’m harassing homeless people.”

“I thought you couldn’t afford the negative publicity of this woman worshiping the Virgin Mary down here. Your choices are somewhat limited. Cover up this crack, since that’s the attraction that draws her, and make it unpleasant for her to come around. Or tolerate her sitting there with her candles, howling about the Mother of God.”

Gian Palmetto wanted something else, something magical, the woman wafted away by Harriet’s chanting sections of the Illinois Criminal Code that would bring the gods of justice to life here on Underground Wacker. He spent twenty minutes trying to argue her into some other suggestions. In the cab going home she phoned the firm’s word processing center to dictate a report, along with her billable hours for the Pleiades time sheet. In her irritation she charged Palmetto for the seven minutes she’d spent watching the tourist boat.

W
HEN HECTOR PHONED
, Harriet was standing in the living room looking at the street. She arrived home determined to have things out with Mara once and for all, although what things she couldn’t specify. She was furious with Mara for creating a hideous public spectacle, but at the same time felt guilty for ignoring the baby sister all those years ago. She wished Mara would move away, leave her in peace with Mephers and Grandfather. She wanted to beat up Mara at the same time as she pictured herself wrapping her little sister in a warm blanket and nursing her.

But when she rapped on Mara’s door and sharply called her name she got no reply. Her anger rising, she called more loudly. Damned brat, pretending not to hear her! The woman from the cleaning service emerged from the kitchen. She told Harriet in her halting English that Mara wasn’t home. She had come in, yes, and left again in maybe thirty minutes, with—Barbara struggled for the word and finally imitated someone walking with a burden—yes, a backpack. No, Mara had not left any message.

Harriet unlocked the door to Mephers’s room and checked that everything was ready for the housekeeper’s return in the morning. The sheets were clean, the few books standing at military attention,
just as Mephers had left them. A conservator at the Art Institute, grateful to
Grand-père
for saving her husband’s life, had repaired the damage to the secretary.

Maybe when Mephers returned the apartment would feel more inviting. But Mara—she was like the warning buzz of violins in a horror movie: fearful things followed in her wake.

Harriet went into her sister’s room, flinching as always from the disarray—drawers open with shirts and bras dangling over the edges, paper everywhere, books piled next to the bed, a musty smell from unwashed sheets. Mara had left her computer turned on. Harriet touched the mouse, resolving the screen saver back to text.

Harriet looked around her sister’s room, wondering if she’d finished the letter in a different file and printed it out. After searching the visible surfaces, and checking in her own room to see if she’d overlooked a note, she decided Mara had started to write, been unable to finish, and left her machine on so that Harriet would see the message. Back in Mara’s room, she printed out the letter, saved the file, turned off the machine.

Self-dramatizing brat. A good thing she’d taken off: they could use some peace in the apartment. Off to find their mother? When would Mara believe that Beatrix was dead? Three weeks before Harriet turned fifteen, as she was planning a birthday party for friends from school, writing out the invitations, proud of her spiky handwriting: Grandfather telling her Beatrix had an accident in her bath—always be careful climbing in and out of the tub.

What Harriet remembered most clearly about that day, besides her bold black script on the white cardboard notes, was her arms, slender against the navy of her school skirt as Grandfather explained to her: Beatrix had been living with terrible people, so terrible, Grandfather would prefer Harriet never knew the exact circumstances. He had made sure the papers wouldn’t print the story, so she needn’t fear nosy questions at school. No church funeral—Beatrix had been estranged too long from her family—just a quiet service in a funeral home. Mara, two at the time, didn’t understand, and later never believed.

Harriet went to her suite at the other end of the hall and took off her caped dress. With her usual precise motions she folded it into a bag for Barbara to take to the dry cleaners. She stood under the shower, washing the grime from Underground Wacker from her hair and her skin, standing there long after she was clean, thinking of—nothing.

When she emerged she still couldn’t get her mind to work. If Mara had run away, it solved the problem. Mephers would return home, she and Grandfather and Harriet would resume the life Mara had interrupted nineteen years ago. She would be Grandfather’s only princess once again. Grandfather’s Ice Queen.

Hector’s phone call came in while she was pushing her hands against her diaphragm, feeling how empty she was. When his unfamiliar voice asked hesitantly for Ms. Stonds, Harriet tensed, thinking she was about to hear of some fresh disaster of Mara’s. But she said yes, she was Ms. Stonds.

Hector apologized for not seeing her in clinic that afternoon. “I don’t want to go behind your grandfather’s back, but if you’d like to talk to me I’d be happy to set up an appointment.”

“You’ve made a mistake, Doctor—I’m Ms. Harriet Stonds. Were you looking for my sister Mara?”

Hector, nervous to begin with, grew more flustered by her cool tone. Was it Mara who had come into the clinic? Should he have known there was a sister? Was Harriet going to report him to the doctor?

“Mara’s gone out, Doctor—what did you say your name was?—Tammuz. I’m afraid I don’t know when she might return but shall I take a message?”