The Burgess Boys (5 page)

Meanwhile, Jim, pacing around the foyer, noticed that both car keys were hanging on the key holder by the door. Bob had not taken the key last night! How was he going to drive the car to Maine without the goddamn car key? Jim yelled this question to Helen as he joined her on the sidewalk, and Helen said quietly that if he yelled like that any more she would move into Manhattan. Jim shook the key in front of her face. “How is he supposed to
get
there?” he whispered fiercely.

“If you would give your brother a key to our house, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

Approaching around the corner, driving slowly, was a black town car. Jim waved his arm above his head in a kind of backward swimming motion. And then finally Helen was tucked into the backseat, where she smoothed her hair as Jim, on his cell phone, called Bob. “Pick up the phone, Bob.” Then: “What happened to you? You just woke
up
? You’re supposed to be on your way to Maine. What do you mean you were awake all night?” Jim leaned forward and said to the driver, “Make a stop at the corner of Sixth and Ninth.” He sat back. “Well, guess what I have in my hand? Take a guess, knucklehead. The key to my car, that’s right. And listen—are you listening? Charlie Tibbetts. Lawyer for Zach. He’ll see you Monday morning. You can stay through Monday, don’t pretend you can’t. Legal Aid doesn’t give a crawling crap. Charlie’s out of town for the weekend, but I thought of him last night and spoke to him. He should be the guy. Good guy. All you have to do in the next couple days is keep this
contained
, understand? Now get down to the sidewalk, we’re on our way to the airport.”

Helen pushed the button that lowered the window, put her face to the fresh air.

Jim sat back, taking her hand. “We’re going to have a terrific time, sweetheart. Just like the farty-looking couples in the brochures. It’ll be great.”

Bob was in front of his building wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and grimy athletic socks. “Hey, slob-dog,” Jim called. He tossed the car key through the open window, and Bob caught it in one hand.

“Have fun.” Bob waved once.

Helen was impressed at how easily Bob caught the key. “Good luck up there,” she called.

The town car rounded the corner, disappeared from sight, and Bob turned to face his building. When young, he had run into the woods rather than watch the car that took Jim off to college, and he wanted to run there now. Instead, he stood on broken cement next to metal garbage bins, and shards of sunlight stabbed his eyes while he fumbled with his keys.

Years earlier, when Bob had been newer to the city, he had gone to a therapist named Elaine. She was a large woman, loose-limbed, as old as he was now, which of course back then had seemed pretty old. He had sat in the midst of her benevolent presence, picking at a hole in the arm of her leather couch, glancing anxiously at the fig tree in the corner (a plant that looked fake except for its marked and sad leaning toward the tiny sliver of light that came through the window, and its ability to grow, in six years’ time, one new leaf). Had Elaine been here on the sidewalk right now, she would have told him, “Bob, stay in the present.” Because dimly Bob was aware of what was happening to him as his brother’s car turned the corner,
left him
, dimly, he knew, but—oh, poor Elaine, dead now from some awful disease, and she had tried so hard with him, been so kind—it did no good. The sunlight shattered him.

Bob, who was four years old when his father died, remembered only the sun on the hood of the car that day, and that his father had been covered by a blanket, also—always—Susan’s little-girl accusing voice: “It’s all your fault, you stupid-head.”

Now, standing on the sidewalk in Brooklyn, New York, Bob pictured his brother tossing him the car key, watched the town car disappear, thought of the task that was waiting, and inside him was the cry
Jimmy, don’t go
.

Adriana stepped through the door.

2

Susan Olson lived in a narrow three-story house not far from town. Since her divorce seven years earlier she had rented the top rooms to an old woman named Mrs. Drinkwater, who came and went with less frequency these days, and who never complained about the music coming from Zach’s room, and always paid her rent on time. The night before Zach was to turn himself in, Susan had to climb the stairs, knock on the old woman’s door, and explain to her what had happened. Mrs. Drinkwater was surprisingly sanguine. “Dear, dear,” she said, sitting on the chair by her little desk. She was wearing a pink rayon robe, and her stockings were rolled to right above her knees; her gray hair was pinned back, but much of it was falling down. This is how she looked if she wasn’t dressed to go out, which was a lot of the time. She was thin as kindling.

“You need to know,” Susan said, sitting down on the bed, “because after tomorrow you might get asked by reporters what he’s like.”

The old lady shook her head slowly. “Well, he’s quiet.” She looked at Susan. Her glasses were huge trifocals, and wherever her eyes were, you could never quite see into them directly; they wavered around. “Never been rude to me,” she added.

“I can’t tell you what to say.”

“Nice your brother’s coming. Is it the famous one?”

“No. The famous one is off vacationing with his wife.”

A long silence followed. Mrs. Drinkwater said, “Zachary’s father? Does he know?”

“I emailed him.”

“He’s still living in … Sweden?”

Susan nodded.

Mrs. Drinkwater looked at her little desk, then at the wall above it. “I wonder what that’s like, living in Sweden.”

“I hope you sleep,” Susan said. “I’m sorry about this.”

“I hope
you
sleep, dear. Do you have a pill?”

“I don’t take them.”

“I see.”

Susan stood, ran a hand over her short hair, looked around as though she was supposed to do something but couldn’t remember what.

“Good night, dear,” said Mrs. Drinkwater.

Susan walked one flight down and knocked lightly on Zach’s door. He was lying on his bed, huge earphones over his ears. She tapped her own ear to indicate that he should remove them. His laptop lay on the bed beside him. “Are you frightened?” she asked.

He nodded.

The room was almost dark. Only one small light was on, over a bookshelf that had stacks of magazines piled on it. A few books lay scattered below. The shades were drawn, and the walls, painted black a few years earlier—Susan had come home from work one day and found them that way—were empty of posters or photographs.

“Did you hear from your father?”

“No.” His voice was husky and deep.

“I asked him to email you.”

“I don’t want you to ask.”

“He’s your father.”

“He shouldn’t write me because you tell him to.”

After a long moment she said, “Try and get some sleep.”

At noontime the next day she made Zach tomato soup from a can and a grilled cheese sandwich. He bent his head close to the bowl and ate half the sandwich with his thin fingers, then pushed back the plate. When he looked up at her with his dark eyes, for a moment she saw him as the small child he’d once been, before his social ungainliness had been fully exposed, before his inability to play any sport had hindered him irredeemably, before his nose became adult and angular and his eyebrows one dark line, back when he had seemed a shy and notably obedient little boy. A picky eater, always.

“Go shower,” she said. “And put on nice clothes.”

“What’s nice clothes?” he asked.

“A shirt with a collar. And no jeans.”

“No jeans?” This was not defiant, but worried.

“Okay. Jeans without holes.”

Susan picked up the phone and called the police station. Chief O’Hare was in. Three times she had to give her name before they let her talk to him. She had written down what she would say. Her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to each other, and she moved them extra to get the words out.

“Any minute now,” she concluded, looking up from the notebook paper she’d written on. “I’m just waiting for Bob.” She could picture Gerry’s big hand holding the telephone, his face without expression. He had added a great deal of weight over the years. Sometimes, not often, he came into the eyeglass store at the mall across the river where Susan worked and he’d wait while his wife’s glasses were fixed. He’d nod to her. He was not pleasant, or unpleasant; she’d have expected it that way.

“Yuh. Susan. The way I see it is, we got a situation here.” His voice over the phone was tired, professional. “Once we know who the perp is, I’d be wrong not to send someone to get him. Lot of publicity with this.”

“Gerry,” she said. “Dear God. Please do not send a cop car. Please do not do that.”

“Here’s what I think. I think we’re not having this conversation. Old friends. That’s what we are. I’m sure I’ll see you soon. Before the day is over. That’s it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Bob drove comfortably in his brother’s car, the motion steady beneath him. Through the windshield he saw signs for shopping outlets, or lakes, but mostly there were the trees of Connecticut always moving closer, then whizzing by, then gone. Traffic moved quickly and with a sense of community, as though all drivers were tenants in this fast forward-moving form. The image of Adriana appeared in Bob’s mind. I’m scared, she had said to him, standing by the doorway in a maroon sweat suit, her streaky blond hair moving in the breeze. She had a throaty voice he’d not heard before—she had never talked to him before. Without makeup she looked much younger; her cheekbones were pale, her green eyes, rimmed with red, were large and questioning. But the fingernails were bitten, and this broke his heart. He thought: Almost, she could have been my daughter. For years Bob had lived with the shadow of his not-children appearing before him. Earlier in his life it might have been a child on a playground he passed by, yellow-haired (as Bob had once been), playing hopscotch tentatively. Later a teenager—boy or girl, it happened with each—on the sidewalk laughing with a friend. Or, these days, a law student interning in his office might reveal a sudden aspect of expression that would cause Bob to think: This could have been my kid.

He asked if she had family nearby.

Parents in Bensonhurst who managed apartment buildings. Shaking her head, she wasn’t close to them. But she had a job in Manhattan as a paralegal. Except how would she work, feeling so— And she made a circular motion by her ear. Her lips were very pale. Work will help, he told her. You’ll be surprised.

I won’t always feel this way?, she asked.

Oh no. No. (But he knew: The end of a marriage was a crazy time.) You’ll be all right, he told her. He told her that many times, as the shivering dog sniffed the ground; she had asked him many times. She said she might lose her job; a woman was coming back from maternity leave and it was a very small office. He gave her the name of Jim’s law firm; the place was big, they hired frequently, she was not to worry. Life had a way of working out, he said. But do you really think so?, she asked, and he said he did.

The pinkish-tinted buildings of Hartford passed by, and Bob had to slow the car and concentrate. Traffic was picking up. He passed a truck; a truck passed him. And then as he finally drove into Massachusetts, his thoughts, as though waiting, turned to Pam. Pam, his dearly loved ex-wife, whose intelligence and curiosity were matched only by her conviction that she had neither. Pam, whom he had met walking across the campus of the University of Maine more than thirty years ago. She had come from Massachusetts, the only child of older parents who, by the time Bob first greeted them at graduation, appeared worn out by their chaotic daughter (the mother, though, still living, bedridden, in a nursing home not far from this turnpike, no longer knowing who Pam was, or Bob either, should he choose to visit, which he had in the past). Pam, full-figured when she was young, intense, bewildered, always ready to laugh, always tumbling from one enthusiasm to the next. Who could say what anxiety drove her? He recalled her squatting one night to pee between two parked cars in the West Village, drunk and laughing, after they’d moved to New York. Here’s to the women’s movement, a fist in the air. Equal pissing rights! Pam, who could swear like a sailor. His dearly loved Pam.

And now, seeing a sign for Sturbridge, Bob’s mind went to his grandmother, who used to tell stories of their English ancestors arriving ten generations earlier. Bob, sitting in his child’s chair: “Tell me the part about the Indians.” Oh, there were scalpings, and a little girl kidnapped, taken off to Canada, and her brother, though it took him years in his raggedy clothes, went and rescued her, brought her back to their coastal town. Back then, his grandmother said, women made soap out of ashes. They used daisy root for earaches. One day his grandmother told him how thieves would be made to walk through the town. She said if a man stole a fish he had to walk around town holding the fish, calling out, “I stole this fish and I am sorry!” While the town crier followed, beating a drum.

Bob’s interest in his ancestors was over with that story. Forced to walk through the town yelling, “I stole this fish and I am sorry!”?