Obituary Writer (9780547691732) (26 page)

"This isn't an interview," I said to Margaret. "I'm just here to see you."

"You shouldn't worry about me," she said. "I know a reporter from a friend."

Margaret looked washed out in her orange prison jumpsuit, but her spirits were high and I got the sense that a tremendous burden had been lifted. She had a self-possession about her, an aura of calm.

We talked about jail, her daily life, where she thought she'd be transferred to, the dates of the trial, if it was likely to go that way. I said I had full confidence in her attorney. He was one of the best in the city, and the evidence on the tape couldn't be more clear. I told her what the attorneys at the paper had told me, that the half-hour trip between St. Charles and my apartment was not enough time for premeditated murder. She'd get manslaughter in a plea bargain—four to six years—and if it went to trial she had a good chance for acquittal.

"You'd have enough public support," I said. "The D.A.'s office has nothing to gain."

I talked on and on, telling her what she already knew, details her attorney no doubt briefed her on several times a day. I guess I was afraid to stop talking, afraid that she'd see something awful in me. When at last I had run out of words, Margaret leaned forward and spoke into the grate.

"Alicia killed my brother," she said. "Whatever happens, I have no regrets."

Not a day after visiting Margaret, however, after the last of my major stories had run, I was in my apartment taking one last look through Alicia's boxes. I had promised to send her belongings to Jackie Steele in Weatherford, and I wanted to be sure that they contained nothing upsetting.

The police had seized the journals as evidence, all but the one I had later found under my bed, which I supposed I should turn over to the authorities as well. Before the police had arrived, I had already glanced through most of her journals, including the one from 1973, when Alicia and the boy chemist, whose name did turn out to be Phillip, were doing their experiments. Her entries corroborated her conference room confession almost to the word, which I had noted later in one of my articles.

When I had sealed and addressed all but one of the boxes, I considered Alicia's journal entry from the day Arthur died, the innocuousness of it, and decided to look at it one last time.

As I was flipping toward the last pages, an envelope fell out onto my apartment floor. It was a number 10 envelope, wrinkled and yellowed, unmarked except by the stains of age. I picked it up from the floor and turned it over. It was still sealed. I held it up to the light and could see, gathered at a bottom corner, what looked like tiny pearls.

I took a knife out of my kitchen drawer and cut open the envelope. Inside, all in a row, were four black and red beans. I poured them out onto the counter, where they plinked and rolled jollily around.

Daniel Pierson had died in his sleep.

I hadn't talked to Thea since the night Alicia moved into my apartment. When she called me at work with the news, I went to the men's room, locked myself in a stall, and cried.

Ritger was pleased when I handed him the twelve-inch obituary detailing Daniel Pierson's acts of valor in Vietnam. He made Thea's father the lead obit in the Sunday paper, with a photograph. It was the last obituary that I'd write.

After the burial, Thea came over to my house. My mother left us alone, saying she'd be back in a little while, and we sat in the dark living room, not bothering to open the blinds. Neither of us could find much to talk about. I got up and made tea because it was something to do.

Finally I said, "I've been incredibly selfish. I was so caught up in my own crises. I had no idea."

"I know, Gordie." She twirled the tea bag in her cup.

I had more to say.

"When you asked me what happened between us I didn't tell you, because I was mixed up and stupid and my imagination had gotten the better of me." I couldn't look her in the eye. "I thought you had found someone else. I was convinced of it."

"Why didn't you say something?" She looked up from her tea.

"I tried to," I said. "I was so sure I was right. I couldn't think to speak."

"You can't keep everything to yourself, Gordie. When you keep everything to yourself, eventually the secret will turn on you and make you crazy. He was a friend. You know that now."

I said nothing for a minute, then, "It turns out I do have a secret to tell you." I leaned back against the metal of the kitchen doorjamb.

"I found out something a couple of days ago that's turned my whole life into a joke." Thea and I had never talked about Alicia, but I knew from my mother that Thea had read all of the articles. "You know those four jequirity beans that she had been saving, the ones that she presumably used to poison her husband?"

Thea nodded.

"Well I was searching through her things and I found them," I said.

Thea set down her tea. "So she didn't do it," she said, almost a question.

"I don't know. She confessed to it. Now I don't know," I said. "The envelope that I found them in was old, too, like it hadn't been opened since 1973."

"She still might have done it, Gordie. You can't be sure. Maybe she had an extra stash of those beans."

"But I read her journal entry from the day her husband died, and she says nothing about killing him," I said.

"Okay, then why did she confess?"

"Maybe the story became more important than anything," I said, to myself as much as to Thea.

I hadn't planned to tell anyone about finding the jequirity beans, certainly not my mother or my editors. I'd already written five articles, and this latest discovery might force me to recant. But worse than that were the broader implications of Alicia's possible innocence. Margaret might have killed her, but I was the one who had set the events in motion.

"So what are you going to do?" Thea asked.

"What should I do?"

Thea walked over to me. "No secrets," she said.

Then she got her coat, touched my shoulder, and made her way to the front door.

I followed her out and sat down on the front steps, watching her.

She started the car, lowered the sun visor, and pulled out into the road. As she turned up the street ahead, I thought I saw her look back at me, and for a moment I felt something like hope.

Back in the house, I picked up Thea's teacup and held it against my cheek, where it still felt warm. Removing the funeral program from my pocket, I took off my tie and blazer and went wearily into my bedroom, laying my clothes across my writing desk. I noticed again the pictures on the wall, of my mother on her wedding day, of Harry Truman and his big gray smile, and the one from my uncle's yard taken when I was five years old. I leaned back against the bed and stared at the picture of myself in my father's shadow.

It came to me then what Thea had meant when she talked about the danger of secrets. I went into my mother's room, over to the rolltop desk that had been closed to me for eighteen years. I tested it and it pushed back easily. When had my mother stopped locking it?

There was a stack of mementos: my father with a flattop in a yearbook photo, his face rough from adolescence; a picture of him on an aircraft carrier saluting, holding a mop over his shoulder as if it were a rifle; a shoebox full of letters sent to my mother's address in Missouri and her parents' house in Indiana; an announcement of my birth—eight pounds, two ounces—a "future Hall-of-Famer."

Next to the overflowing shoebox was a monogrammed lighter, a ring of keys, a pair of reading glasses, and my father's wallet, thick with ticket stubs from White Sox games, grocery coupons, dozens of old receipts. In the billfold were two fives, a one-dollar bill, and a union card from the Newspaper Guild. His Illinois driver's license said he was five foot ten, 175 pounds.

And tucked in between all these things was a Ziploc bag safeguarding my father's obituary.

Charles Hatch, a typesetter for the
Chicago Tribune,
died Sunday at Mercy Hospital of a malignant brain tumor. He was 36.

Mr. Hatch was born in Wichita, Kansas, and briefly attended the University of Missouri-Columbia before joining the United States Navy in 1959. He was posted at New London, Connecticut, Norfolk, Virginia, and in the South Pacific.

After leaving the Navy, he attended Hamilton Technical College in Indianapolis. He moved to Chicago in 1963, where he was hired by the
Tribune
as a typesetter.

He was a member of the International Typographical Union and a contributing editor of the Chicago area ITU newsletter.

Mr. Hatch leaves his wife, Lorraine, and a son, Gordon, of Chicago, as well as a brother, Thomas, of Wichita, Kansas.

A funeral service will be held at 11
A.M.
tomorrow at St. Bridgid's Church in Oak Park. Burial will be in Oak Park Cemetery.

The obituary ran in the
Chicago Tribune,
five and a half inches, no subhead.

I was sitting on my mother's bed reading it a second time when my mother came into the room. She stood in the doorway, in the crinkly black dress she had worn to Daniel Pierson's funeral.

"I'm so sorry, Gordie," she said softly.

I put my father's obituary back inside the bag and returned it to the desk with his wallet and lighter, his glasses and keys. I restacked the pictures in the order I had found them.

"It's okay, Mother," I said, leaving the desk open as I turned and left the room.

Later that evening, I made two grilled cheese sandwiches and heated up a large can of tomato soup.

"You've made dinner?" my mother asked, emerging from the back bedroom, where she had been all afternoon.

"I did." I placed soup spoons and napkins on the dining room table.

She sat down, unfolding her napkin.

"What would you like to drink?"

"Water's fine," she said.

"You've got a bottle of wine. Wouldn't you like a glass?" I opened it and poured two glasses of red wine.

"Wine, then, I guess." She smiled.

I brought the plates and bowls and glasses of wine to the table and sat down. I looked at my mother eating in silence, her black hair falling in front of her face.

She sniffed, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"I want you to know something," I said. "There's no sense going into it now, but I do understand why you thought those stories were necessary."

She looked up, and I could tell that she wanted to respond but could not.

"Thank you for dinner," she said.

MY FINAL DAY
of testimony at Margaret's hearing, as a witness for the defense, was blustery and cold. The day before, the temperature had reached sixty. Now snow was in the forecast. The
Independent
's attorney told me to say nothing as we walked out of the courtroom and made our way down the hallway to the elevators. "Just ignore the questions and push on."

From the stairs I saw the small crowd of reporters and TV people waiting beyond the doors. Outside, the sky was pale purple, turning gray. The dying light brought things closer, into sharper focus: the French façade of City Hall across the street, the texture of someone's wool overcoat, my own face reflected in a wide-angle lens.

I sometimes used to picture this scene, flashbulbs and cameras, microphones dropping in, a closing circle, the strange feeling that came of being surrounded. The day after Christmas, I had seen myself on television descending these steps, and courtroom sketches of me with rosy cheeks and a lopsided face nothing like my own. On one station, these images followed photographs of Nicolai Ceausescu, eyes open, executed by firing squad.

A girl, I guessed in her late teens, was running up the sidewalk toward the courthouse. She wore a red turtleneck sweater and a white parka, and she was waving as she ran. Her skin was luminous, her cheeks full of color, a mist of perspiration over her face.

"Mr. Hatch," she called, out of breath, "I have a question."

Her pale eyebrows were raised, her blue eyes expectant. "Just one question, Mr. Hatch."

"No questions!" my attorney said.

But the girl could see an opportunity in my response, the way I stopped as she ran up to me, the look on my face as if I were trying to place her.

"I want to know about the stories you wrote in November—the first ones, from the week after Alicia Whiting died," she said. "Were they true?"

One of the reporters was stepping in front of her. The others called out questions of their own.

I turned to face her. "I believed them," I said.

She seemed satisfied. "I see," she said, and doing her best to sound like the other reporters crowded around me, like interviewers she had watched on television, she added, "That will be all, thank you." There was something sweet about it, the way she shrank, as if recognizing the false ring of her words.

The sky was darkening; the smell of snow was in the air. I crossed Market to Memorial Plaza, where the Gremlin was parked by a young tree.

"I'll call you," my lawyer said.

Up the road, a light had turned green and cars were pouring across Market Street, leaving what was left of the reporters stranded on the other side. I pulled out, driving west, away from the river.

I rubbed my hands together and switched on the heat. The old fan flapped and rumbled, coughing out warm air. A light snow had begun to fall, melting on the windshield, and the Gremlin filled with the smell of engine oil, as it had those winter mornings when I set out in darkness to deliver the news.