Sorrow's Crown (22 page)

Anubis, keyed to my grandmother's nuances after so many years, picked up on any subtle shifting in mood and tone. The air thickened with attitude and history. He stirred and began to whine.

I started to get up and said, "Oh no."

"You see," she said. "I once tried to kill Theodore
Harnes
."

I fell off the couch.

~ * ~

Coming up the Leones' walkway, I caught an odd, sharp perfume rising from around the trellis. Only tangled dead vines remained twisted between the slats, and I was convinced Katie would do the pruning this year. I saw no rose buds but maybe hidden in the gutters of the shrubs some wildflowers were already blossoming. I didn't want to think that a concussion might actually be filling my brain with phantom scents.

As I entered the boarding house, I could smell the heavier, savory, more substantial aromas from the Orchard Inn's kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Leone banged pots and pans and sang alternating stanzas of "
Funiculi
,
Funicula
," sounding just slightly more in tune than my father and Keaton Wallace had when parading around town without their shirts. I turned and leaned in the doorway, watching leaves scuffle in the breeze. I looked out at the rest of the street.

The weather had taken a contradictory turn again, bypassing mild and heading straight into summer heat. People took advantage of the day. I heard lawnmowers and hedge clippers from down the block. A paperboy on a four-hundred-dollar bicycle with tires so thick they looked like they were belted flung copies of the
Gazette
onto the neighborhood lawns, the way I used to do. The house next door actually had a couple of
whiffle
balls and bats lying in the grass, and a plastic pitching machine grounded in the center of the yard. I wondered if I could ever get used to living in the Grove again.

I shut the door and a draft spun the floral chintz curtains. Mr. Leone, still singing, walked into the day room and turned on the television, where he grew entranced by one of the Italian soap operas: two men in the middle of a knife fight snorted at each other, while a woman wept and prayed and tried to keep them apart. The choreography had a true operatic quality, the guys tussling without really touching, staring wide-eyed with pursed lips. I figured she'd be accidentally stabbed by one of her lovers. Maybe they'd wring every bit of melodrama out of the scene like the American soaps and have her get it in the belly from both men.

Mr. Leone sat and scuttled forward to the edge of his seat. The woman threw her arms out and the camera came in for a close-up on her shocked face; the men shrieked and held her dying in their arms. They were all covered with a thick red liquid that looked more like tomato paste than blood. Mr. Leone let out a loud, "
Madonna!
" The dead girl tried hard not to blink. The two men started to cry, and Mr. Leone looked like he might do the same any second.

I took a step inside. He turned and said, "
Uyh
, Jonny, you don't look so good. You kids and all your stress, it'll kill you. Relax, drink some
vino
, it's good for your heart, you listen to me. You and Katie, why don't you go have fun, like go bowling? Or better, you stay in tonight and let me cook a good meal for you. I was right, wasn't I? That fish in that goddamn Frank's Bistro, it makes you sick. I'll get some breakfast, okay? And you make your girl eat."

"I'll do my best."

"We still got the
pasta
fagioli
. It doesn't go bad, you listen to me. You want that?"

"Maybe something a little lighter," I said. "She hasn't been feeling well lately."

"Yeah, yeah, she looks pale to me all the time, I told you." He nodded knowingly, and I caught him glancing at the crucifixes and statues of saints as if praying for my soul. "
Aspetta
minuto
, I make some peppers and eggs.
Biscotti et
caffe
, it sounds like a spicy meal, but it's not. It'll help. A little. I have three sons, I been through this before."

"Thank you."

"And it'll help you, too, you must have one big headache. I saw the news on the television early this morning. I'm not gonna ask about it, you tell me later when you want. All right?"

"All right."

"Well, okay then."

I watched some more of the Italian soap opera. Soon the dead woman roused and the men crossed themselves and thanked God and everybody appeared to be friends again. In ten minutes Mr. Leone brought out a tray of coffee and cookie-like biscuits, two plates of fluffy omelet with thinly sliced red and green bell peppers. "You can bowl a two-thirty easy when you eat this. Jonny, the back of your head looks like you got an eggplant growing out of it."

I took the tray upstairs trying not to think of that image, knocked lightly on Katie's door and opened it. She stood at the mirror doing her hair and let out a heavy sigh when she saw me, perhaps like an exasperated mother, perhaps as if she'd been holding her breath for the past two days. I noticed how all her muscles slacked at once. She dropped back on the bed, and I sat beside her and put the tray on my lap.

"Here, we're going to bowl at least a two-thirty now."

"Oh my, and just when I'd given up hope."

I brushed the hair from her face, and drew my thumbs across her dimples. The set of her lips remained the same, and then slowly the lines around her mouth deepened, the frown causing a trench between her eyes. She sounded trapped between annoyance and relief. "I've been worried as hell, you know."

"I know. Did you see the news earlier?"

She nodded, and the light in her eyes glowed and dimmed and glowed. "There's a lot of conjecture about you and why you're always getting into trouble."

"I'd like to know the answer to that myself," I said.

Only half-finished, her hair rolled out to one side and twisted down across her face into her mouth. She kept brushing it behind her ear. "Is
Crummler
out of danger with this sadist gone?"

"Maybe out of immediate physical danger, although his brother told me they wouldn't have touched him for a while anyway. Still, I don't trust the doctor in charge of
Panecraft
."

"Do you trust the brother?"

I gave the same answer as before. "He saved my life.”

“God, you're lucky that maniac Shanks didn't fracture your skull. Let me see."

She touched the back of my head with talented, trained fingers. She could have been a doctor if only she'd loved the profession enough to continue with medical school; I thought about all the hospitalized men who would never get a cheap thrill out of her touch. I looked around her room. She'd chosen this—she'd preferred Felicity Grove over southern California, where most of us used to dream of moving to after high school.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Come on, you seemed a little flustered. Is Jesus bothering you again?"

I took her in my arms. "Let's go back to bed for a while."

She grinned and the light in her jade eyes flashed more brightly. "Those Italian love songs always get you in the mood."

"If you're lucky I'll serenade you with my rendition of ‘Summertime in Venice.' "

"You devil."

"Do you feel up to some breakfast?"

"Yes, I'm starved, actually," she said. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"Uh ... let's eat first, then."

I'd stopped at the flower shop earlier. Lowell had been right—not much damage had been done to the place, and Ray had done a solid job of patching up the small side window. I'd cleaned up a few broken pots and scattered bags of
plantgrowth
. The cash register hadn't been worked on though it looked like a couple of flowers had been lifted from the refrigeration unit.
Devington
hadn't had much of a fight left in him. Maybe he stole a corsage for his new girlfriend. Maybe this would be the end of it, or at least the end for another ten years before his mid-life crisis or his bitch of a mother spurred him back after me.

It came as a surprise that Katie had an appetite, and that her face had a pleasant pink shade to it. Like most bachelors, and a vast percentage of married men, I was woefully ignorant about the arcane workings of female biology in general, and about pregnancy in particular. Though she'd stressed that morning sickness was common, it worried me to see her so ill so often. I'd batted around the idea of abortion for her health's sake, which made it even worse to think about.

She waved me on with her free hand while she scooped peppers into her mouth. I told her about the shop and she froze in mid-bite. "Tell me it's not bad."

"It's not bad."

"Tell me you're not just telling me that."

"I'm not just telling you that. Almost nothing was touched."

"Who did it?"

"
Arnie
Devington
."

"That bastard, why'd he have to pick on me? Did they catch him?"

"No, there's no proof it was him. Lowell might go out there to roust him a little, or maybe he won't."

"Well, how nice for everybody." Her sarcasm didn't have much sharpness to it, maybe because she didn't want to look bad in front of Jesus. "I know this might seem a peculiar time to bring this up, seeing as how I've just been vandalized, but have you thought any more about moving the bookstore?"

"Yes," I said. "I have."

She scanned my face, trying to glimpse lies or terror or desperation. I didn't know myself what might be showing in there, but she grinned, apparently appeased, and nibbled on the
biscotta
. "Okay, so back to last night and you getting attacked by this psycho. You think Theodore
Harnes
sent him?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe Sparky thought he would get in better with the boss if he took some initiative."

"That's generally not the way to get in better with the boss."

"That's why it doesn't feel right to me."

"So what did Anna have to say about all this?"

I told her what Anna had explained to me back at the house. I tried to keep my voice steady but wound up sounding like a crotchety old man who'd been having trouble with his regularity. Katie took it in stride, and continued eating until the plate was empty. Everyone had a much calmer demeanor than I did, and it was pissing me off.

"You look surprised," she said.

"Aren't you?"

"That she nearly ran him down? Hell no. Don't you know anything at all about your grandmother? It's not like it was a conspiracy to commit murder. Anna was only nineteen or twenty years old, her friend comes to her distraught, wanting to leave
Harnes
, who, as we've already established, has got some
serious
issues, and asks for help."

"She might've killed him."

"She was trying to help her friend get free from a bad situation, and the son of a bitch wouldn't get out of the way."

Katie hadn't seen the expression on Anna's face: the self-righteous glint in her eye, but with some doubts surfacing even after all these years. "Still . . ."

"Still nothing. I think it was wonderfully brave of her, and you should be proud of what she did. You know what it was like back then, women terrified to leave their husbands, the stigma that went along with divorce."

I could picture the scene clearly, each detail properly placed as my grandmother had told me.

Diane
Cruthers
seeking help from Anna, knocking frantically at an embarrassingly early hour when only a milkman like my grandfather wouldn't be in bed sleeping. Anna, a newlywed herself, unsure of almost everything at the sudden shift of her own life, in a new house not yet a home, married to a virtual stranger she'd known only a few months, startled before sunrise as she stood at the sink cleaning breakfast dishes. My grandfather always had five sausages but never ate the tips, leaving the ten crispy black ends lined in the center of his plate. Diane
Cruthers
, on the verge of enraged hysterics, had come for help . . . but what could Anna do? Only nineteen, Anna understood insecurity well enough.

Without knowing the reasons behind her friend's panic, she could only think of flight as her distraught friend badgered her for some kind of support, never explaining what had happened. Not a mark on her, and Diane
Cruthers
wasn't even crying. Perhaps Anna understood
Harnes
' capabilities already, or merely gave him the benefit of the doubt. Theodore
Harnes
, only a teenager himself, without much presence even then though not quite as
tranquil
as today, void of some necessary part of the human essence, but with a potential for reaping so much, was capable of real evil, and they knew it. They got into the car—a lumbering ten-year-old Airflow
DeSoto
haphazardly washed because my grandfather refused glasses and could never quite get the entire roof or hood done. Where were they going? She had no idea.

Was she only aiding Diane
Cruthers
, or had Anna decided her marriage had been a mistake? But they got in, my grandmother a poor driver at best back then, having just learned only a couple of weeks earlier, fumbling with the starter and crowding the clutch, stalling time and again while Diane let out raspy, bitter breaths beside her.