Say Nice Things About Detroit (7 page)

“I've played in worse than this,” he told his son when they stopped. He handed Cory a cloth handkerchief, which he carried because the kid's nose never stopped running.

Cory blew his nose as a blanket of dust fell on them. “Maybe I won't ever have to,” he said. “I could get lucky.”

David made all the lights up Telegraph till he got to Maple. It was November, the day of the midterm election. He'd voted early in Colorado, a last vote in the West. The trees were bare, the Detroit sky low and gray, the air above freezing but damp, cold and familiar, again the weather of home.

• • •

O
N HIS THIRD
day at work, a Thursday, Smalls stepped into his office with the folder. David had so far billed three and a half hours, all of it for existing clients. Smalls was, appropriately, a short man, plump, in his midfifties at least, but he walked with a bounce in his step that had caught David's eye; he half expected the man to break into a foxtrot as he stepped down the halls of Bergen Smalls Rand and Bergen.

“I've got one for you,” Smalls said. He set the file on an empty portion of David's desk. The other partners had been bringing by their detritus for two days, small issues that they didn't want to deal with or for which they had too little time, all of it related to estate planning. David was still making phone calls west, seeing what business he could hang on to.

“What is it?” David asked.

“A will, of course. Client died recently. I'm the executor, but I'm going to suggest we have you named. This is allowed for. I don't see any problems.”

“Okay,” David said. “Thanks.”

Smalls sat at David's desk. “It's actually a bit of a famous case.”

David reached for the file. Opened it. And that's when he saw Dirk's name.

“It was all over the papers—”

“I knew him,” David said.

“How?”

David explained.

“Well, then,” Smalls said. “I'm sure the family will be happy to deal with you.”

David looked quickly through the will's beneficiaries: Shelly and Michelle Burton and someone named Marlon Booker. Natalie was nowhere in the will. Carolyn, either.

Shelly, the widow, got almost everything, which was a government pension, the house in Detroit, so probably not worth much, its contents, the cars (an Impala and the Mercedes, which was still at the crime lab), $250 K from a life insurance policy, and everything in a UBS brokerage account, less $200,000 for Michelle and $100,000 for Marlon Booker, identified as a family friend. All in all, it was pretty straightforward, a few hours' work to separate assets and file the necessary documents with the court. David admired Dirk. Here was someone who had planned for the unthinkable.

He decided to call Shelly Burton. He'd need to meet with her to introduce himself and get her okay to do the work. He would tell her he'd known Dirk, or at least had met him once. It was an odd thing, and he wanted it to be aboveboard, this, his first work in Michigan.

• • •

“
Y
OUR MOTHER IS
having an affair,” his father told him. David sat on the ancient family couch. His father had removed the plastic covers, thank God.

“Dad,” David said, “Mom's incontinent. She's in the Alzheimer's ward of a nursing home.” An affair? The idea was preposterous.

“I know that. I'm not saying they're sleeping together. You don't have to have sex to cheat.”

David wondered if this was true. “Who is he?” he asked.

“Some big galumph. Chester Jovanovich. A Jew-hater, I bet, even before he lost his mind.”

The intensity on his father's face suggested to David that the old man wanted something from him, Lord knew what. “Dad, are you jealous?”

“Hell yes, I'm jealous. You should see the way she takes care of him. Walks him around, combs his hair. She feeds him, for Chrissake.”

“I see,” David said. It was a small miracle, really. Lately David feared that if he lost his mind, he might turn into the kind of selfish jerk he had always hated. He found it terrifying, not being able to control who you were.

“What do you want me to do?” David asked.

“Who said I want you to do anything?”

“I guess I don't get it, Dad. It sounds like a decent situation. Mom has something to do and Chester Whatevera­vich has someone besides the nurses to look after him. Does he have family?”

“He's a Medicaid case, the lucky SOB”

Apparently luck, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder.

“Don't send me to that home,” his father said. “If the time comes, just grow a pair and shoot me instead.”

• • •

M
IDDLE NOVEMBER,
the time of somber light. It would stay like this for months, till mid-March or so, unbroken only for the odd clear winter's day, when the temperature might drop to forty below zero even if the sky was so blue it could break your heart. There was a reason why the Swedes settled here, the Finns. Sure, the French had founded the place, leaving place-names mispronounced all over the state, but it was the others who'd cut down the forest primeval and filled the factories: Scandinavians, Eastern Europeans drifting east from Chicago, and, later, blacks coming up from the South. Now all were scattering.

It was late in the afternoon when he drove to Shelly's. She was a black woman of indeterminate middle age, tall and mildly plump with straightened hair and a gaudy wedding ring he suspected wasn't worth much. He sat in her living room, lined with bookcases, the books without their dust jackets. It was an odd touch, and it seemed to mute the room's light, just as the light outside was muted. It was a cozy room, and he felt comfortable in it.

She poured him tea and thanked him for coming. He explained that he had once met her husband. He felt a smile twisted on his face. He was nervous, though he wasn't sure why. She had that effect on him. It had something to do with her eyes, big and round and black, as if they could see through him. It was part of an idea he knew he had, namely that black people somehow had a better idea what was really going on in the world than he did. It was a silly prejudice, but he could never shake it. Odd, he thought, how hard it was to get beyond skin color.

He told himself he had nothing to worry about here. Burton's was an easy case—any new lawyer could have handled it.

“Do the Evanses have any claim on the money?” Shelly asked.

“No, Dirk left everything to you, except for portions for your daughter and someone named Marlon Booker.”

“A hundred grand for Marlon,” she said. He asked about Marlon. “Marlon was Dirk's nephew—not by blood. Marlon is the son of the man Dirk thought of as his brother. That was Everett, but Everett died. So now Marlon is Dirk's cross to bear.”

“Any idea how I find Marlon?”

“Keep checking here. He'll come around, sooner or later.”

“You sure?”

“It's part of Dirk's deal. Marlon always has a place to go. The downstairs guest room is his.”

“How 'bout Marlon's mother?” David asked. Mothers tended to know how to contact their children.

“Patrice. You can ask her. I'm not sure she knows where her son is, but you can ask. If you can find her.”

Shelly went to the kitchen, then returned shortly with an address book and read David the number, a 313, like everyone, whites and blacks, used to have. They spent the next ten minutes signing paperwork.

“Please, Mr. Halpert, let's get this closed up as soon as possible,” she said.

“I understand.”

“I want to move down to Texas, to be close to my daughter. I'm ready to list the house.”

“It's a lovely home,” he said, and he meant it.

“Wanna buy it?” she asked.

VII

S
HE REALIZED THAT
Marty was bulkier than David, slightly taller, with more hair. A happier, more satisfied version of a man. Her husband had grown up in Pasadena. He took his success in stride, something to be expected, like the pleasant weather.

The first week back Carolyn allowed herself simply to fall into routine, to spend time with Kevin and catch up at work (287 unanswered e-mails waited upon her return), and to act deliberately, without desperation. She wanted happiness, not to settle. It wouldn't be easy.

She made love with Marty the third night back. It was his idea, and she was glad for it, a way to deal with her guilt. It started after she'd put Kevin to bed and was standing at the stove, boiling water for ginger tea. Marty came up behind her and put his hand on the small of her back. “I'll be right up,” she said before he could speak. She didn't want to hear him ask, “Are you coming to bed?” or “Come to bed,” in that way he had. He was hopeless at flirtation, always had been. She couldn't even blame him. She'd known, and she'd looked past it, thought it wasn't important. One day she would list all the things she used to think weren't important, and in a different column those she once thought were; then she would hold the two lists together just to see all the entries on the wrong side.

Sleeping with Marty wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. It was just one of the many things they did together because even in the absence of passion there was some force that compelled them to do this silly thing together. Once, afterward, lying next to him, she'd felt as though the next thing to do was to sign her name to something, by Marty's, as they did on their tax returns. As if to say,
There, done.

And so it was tonight. It was the first time in a month. If she went back to David after a month, it wouldn't be like this. She was forty-two. She calculated that she made love with Marty thirty times a year—that seemed to be the pace of it—and so that at this rate, and allowing for some slowing with age, she'd sleep with him a thousand more times in the next forty-two years. The thought of forty-two more tax returns seemed far more palatable.

He was asleep. She knew this from his breathing. There was enough light in the room—from the glow of the case that housed the TV and audiovisual components, from the outdoor security lights that made it past their blackout blinds—that she could get out of bed and put on the nightgown she always left at the end of her bed, in case Kevin needed her. She decided to go to his room.

He slept in a ball, breathing deeply. She stood at his bedside, bent over at the waist, and listened to the languorous draws of breath. It was part of her routine, the way she dealt with nighttime terrors and general sleeplessness. She defied a mother to listen to her child sleep and not feel at least a small bit calmer.

At some point her back began to hurt, and so she sat by the bed, listening still. She then laid herself out next to him. Kevin's nightlight threw odd shadows on the ceiling. It was a good room. A peaceful room. It was, really, what you needed. The German car was nice, the four thousand square feet for three people, the pool, the magnolia tree trucked up from the South by the previous owner—all this was lovely, more even than her father the doctor had taught her to expect. But it wasn't necessary. What was necessary was a peaceful room for your child.

• • •

S
UZY MAXWELL CALLED
the next week, a half hour before Carolyn had to leave for therapy.

“Thought any more about the reunion?” Suzy wanted to know.

“No,” Carolyn said. “Not one bit.”

“Things really are bad, aren't they? I can hear it in your voice.”

“Really, Suzy, I just can't deal with the reunion. I mean—”

“I just called to see how you're doing.”

“Why?”

“At the airport? You looked so sad. It's made me think about you.”

“I'm frozen,” Carolyn said. “Can't go forward, can't go back. I can barely acknowledge my husband. He knows something's up and has chosen to try to ignore it. I can see that. I guess he thinks it'll pass. But it's not passing. I've made myself literally sick to my stomach. I can barely eat.”

”You should get help. Professional help.”

“I've got a therapy appointment in thirty minutes,” Carolyn said. “I've got to go, but listen, I appreciate the call.”

“So you're getting help. That's good.”

Out the window of her office, Carolyn could see a bank of clouds rolling in. Below, a light turned red on Wilshire, and then the street lit up with brakelights. She told Suzy goodbye and left the office, far earlier than she really needed to, but that was okay. She figured it was about time she showed up for something early.

• • •

T
HAT NIGHT SHE
put Kevin to bed by reading him
The Sneetches
. He was a little old for the story, they both knew this, but it was something they had between them, a ritual of connection. She could recite the book by heart. The book itself was old and fragile, the aqua dust jacket ripped, the cloth cover worn, its corners rounded with use. It had been Carolyn's book when she was a girl, and Natalie's before that, a favorite of their mother's because, Carolyn used to think, “sneetches” sounded like a German word.

She finished reciting and closed the book, careful to hold it together. Kevin looked at her. He was a gorgeous boy, with large, dark eyes and black bangs. Obviously he had his father's coloring, but his face, with those big cheeks and pointy chin, came from the Evanses.

“What is it, Mom?” he asked.

She realized what she was doing: she was dividing up the marriage, right down to parsing out what part of her child belonged to which side. Thin wrists: Evans. Thick fingers: Clearwater. Long legs: Evans. Smile: Clearwater.

“Are you ready for some sleepies?” she asked.

“Sleepies, Mom? What am I, six years old?”

“You're my boy,” she said. “And you used to love that word.”

“Yeah, like when I was young.”