A Different Light (2 page)

One night in January, on the corner of Marshall and Oak, John’s luck ran out. A carefully planned drug bust had been aborted when a small child stepped out of a corner market directly between the undercover officers and the dealer. John had leaped from behind a Dumpster to pull the boy out of the way at the exact moment the dealer pulled his gun and fired. The child dashed away from the scene with no more than a scratch on his elbow and had run home to tell the tale while John Moran lay face down on the concrete, blood seeping from a hole in the back of his head.

The city had afforded Johnny a hero’s funeral, with representatives from just about every law enforcement department in the state of New Jersey attending. The press had a field day with the story, and for days, Athen could not leave her house without being photographed. The slain officer’s widow had been pure marble, blinking back tears that never fell in public, even when her sobbing daughter had clung to her waist as John’s body had been lowered into the ground. Photographs of a dry-eyed, stony-faced Athena Moran, stoically comforting her in-laws and gently consoling her husband’s partner, were picked up by the national wires and appeared in almost every major newspaper across the country.

For all her stalwart façade, those closest to Athen had been worried, knowing John’s death had rocked her to her very soul. The once-dancing gray eyes were mirrors now only to the void within her, the dazzling smile only
a memory. Her fiery beauty seemed to evaporate, leaving her face drawn and tired, a telltale sign that the tears that were held back in public had been wept in solitude every night for the past five months.

Athen had cut her ties to all but those most intimate of friends, had gone nowhere she hadn’t needed to go. Her life revolved around her daughter and her father. Messages from worried friends left on her answering machine went unanswered; those left with Callie were never returned. In her heart she knew there was a life to be lived, decisions to be made about her future and her daughter’s, but she was unable to face them. She tried to convince herself that time alone would heal her, as if one day she would wake up and be whole again. She recognized self-deception for what it was, but was powerless to move beyond the spot where she stood.

Until that cold January day, even Athen’s social life had revolved around John. Her one night out every other Monday had been with the wives of his fellow officers—dinner, gossip, support. Since John’s death she’d only gone one time. It hadn’t taken long for her to figure out that she was a reminder of what could happen to any one of them. Her shattered life was a whisper that their lives could be destroyed just as easily as hers had been. She’d read their minds in an instant:
There but for the grace of God . . .

She went home early that night, and had lain awake for hours cursing John for having left her and taking her life with him. She never went back to the group, and none of her former friends ever called to ask her why, nor had anyone made an effort to urge her to come back.

Stepping from the shower and reaching for a towel to dry her hair, Athen tried to calm herself. Were it not for
Callie, she’d skip today’s event without a second thought. But she knew that her daughter, eager to see the girls and boys she’d known since birth, had been counting the days. Separated by neighborhoods and different schools, Callie always looked forward to Memorial Day and the chance to renew old friendships, play games, and swim in the lake. Athen silently prayed that Callie would not feel set apart from the other children as she herself now felt from their mothers.

Athen pulled a short pale yellow cotton knit dress over her head, and cinched it at the waist with a wide green belt. She sat on the edge of the bed and tied the multicolored leather thongs of her sandals around her slim ankles. She reached for a straw hat and tied the ribbons under her chin slightly to one side, and stepped back to look critically at herself in the mirror for the first time in months.

She looked pale, almost haggard, and woefully old-fashioned. She took off the hat and went into the bathroom and turned the light back on. She wound her hair up into a soft twist and secured it with a wide clip. Better, but not great. On a whim, she snapped a piece of dried baby’s breath from the wreath that hung on the bathroom door and tucked the sprig into her hair. She rummaged through a basket of makeup that sat unused for months and found blush, a pale lilac eye shadow, and mascara. When she finished, she stepped back to take a look.

Passable, but just barely.

The merry widow I’m not,
she told herself,
but I’ll be damned if Callie’s going to that picnic with a woman who could pass as her grandmother.
She added a little more blush and some lipstick. The extra color was an improvement. She snapped off the light and ran downstairs where
Callie waited impatiently.

ATHEN PARKED AT THE FAR
end of the lot where her car would be shaded by the century-old trees. Though not quite eleven, the morning temperature had already risen into the eighties, the humidity rising along with it.

“Mom, look! Grandpa’s on the patio.” Callie took off toward the back of the white-columned Georgian mansion, running up the grassy slope, all legs in white shorts and sneakers. She waved a greeting to Lilly, the nurse’s aide, a large woman of gentle touch and gentle humor, and came to rest on the bricks at the feet of the old man in the wheelchair.

Only six when her grandfather suffered the first stroke, Callie had few memories of him as the strong giant of a man he once had been. As Athen neared the place where her father sat silent and imprisoned, her heart ached to see how the once-broad shoulders that had carried her as a child were now so small and slumped, the hands that had lifted her into the air now lifeless and pale.

“Pateras,” she addressed him formally, with respect, in Greek. “I’ve a letter from Demitri.”

She kissed the top of his head and pulled a chair closer, taking the thin white pages from the neatly addressed envelope. She read aloud the letter from her father’s brother, first in Greek, then in English, and couldn’t help but wonder how much he understood. She chatted, first a one-sided conversation with him, then a few words with Lilly. Falling silent, she watched Callie feed the ducks that gathered at the edge of the pond.

Lilly left them, and Athen confided the day’s fears and anxieties to her father in a tearful whisper. She told him how the emptiness inside her seemed to widen rather
than diminish as time passed; how her life had no meaning, no direction, except for her daughter.

“Did you feel like that when Mama died?” she asked softly. “I don’t remember what it was like for you then, only what it was like for me. I was so little, but I remember you kept going, kept working and going to meetings. How did you have the strength to go back into the world once she’d left it?”

There would be no response, she knew, nor any recognition that he had heard or understood. The dark brown eyes—so like Callie’s—flickered briefly. If there’d been a message there, its meaning was lost to her. The man who had been both mother and father to her since she was five years old seemed no longer to exist. Her guardian, her champion, who had so carefully and lovingly sheltered her from the world’s dangers, could shelter her no more.

She watched a black speckled caterpillar inch across the bricks and waited for the enormous lump in her throat to dissolve. Moments later, Lilly appeared to announce lunch, and Athen kissed her father good-bye, promising to return tomorrow to bring him all the news from his old friends.

Callie greeted her mother’s beckoning call with a loud “Yahoo!” as she dashed from the pond to the parking lot.

Athen’s stomach churned as she pulled out of the drive, knowing this would be a very long afternoon. The fact that Diana Bennett was the first person she saw upon arriving at the park was a sign that the day was going to be every bit as bad as she thought it would be.

“Hey, Ms. Bennett. Hi!” Callie called out merrily and jumped out of the car.

“Is that you, Callie? Good Lord, you’ve grown another two—make that three—inches since the last time I saw you.” Diana smiled. “I’ve missed seeing you out at the
academy. Aren’t you taking riding lessons anymore?”

“Mom said maybe I can start again in the fall. I hope so.” Callie’s sadness at having suspended her riding lessons over the past few months was evident. She brightened when she told Diana, “We just came from seeing Grandpa.”

“Oh, can it, Callie,” Athen muttered under her breath as she prepared to exit the driver’s side.

“How is he this morning?” Diana’s face tensed slightly.

“He’s okay. The same.” Callie’s attention was diverted by the appearance of one of her old friends. “Hey, Mom, there’s Julie. Hey, Julie! Wait up!”

Callie sprinted across the asphalt, turning back once to wave. “See ya, Ms. Bennett …”

“See you, Callie.” Diana turned to Athen with obvious caution. “Hello, Athen.”

Ari Stavros’s mistress faced his daughter across the back of the car.

“How are you holding up these days?” Diana asked with what appeared to be genuine concern.

“I’m fine.” Athen opened the trunk and made a point of checking the contents of Callie’s beach bag: the carefully folded swimsuit, the towel, the sunscreen.

“I’m sure this is difficult for you. To be here, I mean, after John …” Diana began hesitantly.

“I’m fine.” Athen slammed the trunk with more vigor than was necessary. How could Diana possibly know how hard things were for her?

“Look, if you need a refuge, if things get tough, I’ll be here. If you need to escape …”

“I’m fine, Diana. Really,” Athen insisted, averting her eyes to the left as another car pulled in to park next to her. Relieved to see an old friend behind the wheel, she turned
her back stiffly on Diana as she greeted the newcomers. When she turned back, Diana was gone.

The day passed in a haze of handshakes and hugs, much as Athen had known it would, and she’d survived. Late in the afternoon, she sat alone on the small rise overlooking the playing field where the children’s games were being set up. Searching the gathering crowd, she found her daughter in the midst of a group of young girls pairing off for the sack race, bending down to tie their legs together much as she herself had done so long ago. Unconsciously, her tongue sought out her front tooth, capped since that Memorial Day when she was twelve, when Angie Gillespie’s foot, tied to Nancy Simpson’s, collided with Athen’s face as they fell in heap at the finish line.

Lost in reverie, she did not hear the approaching footsteps until it was too late.

“Oh, my, would you just look at that bunch?” Diana Bennett sat down beside Athen on the grass and nodded to the group of men gathered not fifty feet away, set off slightly apart from those flocked around the picnic tables. “Our fearless leaders. Defenders of the city. Dan Rossi’s sitting on that beach chair like Caesar at a field maneuver, surrounded by all his little generals. The man who would be king.”

Athen smiled wanly as the feeling of being trapped washed over her. She had no desire to engage in conversation, personal or political, with this woman. She turned her attention to the white-haired man in the dark glasses and the Mets cap.

Dante Rossi, the mayor of Woodside Heights and its undisputed political kingpin, was seated in a folding chair no doubt provided by a devoted employee to spare the boss the discomfort of perching on the edge of backless picnic
benches with the peons all afternoon. His closest advisers stood around him in a cluster like the palace guard.

“And look at Harlan Justis—that’s City Solicitor Justis.” Diana pointed discreetly at the tall thin man who was lifting a tiny infant from the backpack with which a young mother struggled. “That son of a gun is playing the crowd. Now check out Rossi, watching Justis. See his face? ‘Someone had better remind old Harlan that no one’s a candidate until I say he’s a candidate.’” Diana effectively mimicked the mayor’s gruff tone.

“Candidate for what?” Athen asked, curious in spite of herself.

“Mayor, of course.”

“What do you mean? Rossi’s been mayor forever.”

“It only seems like forever.” Diana laughed. “But actually it’s been a little less than eight years. Look at those meatheads. Circling like sharks around a capsized boat. Just waiting for Rossi to give one of them the nod for the big chair.”

“But Rossi’s still mayor.”

“He won’t be, after November.” Diana leaned back on one elbow, a bemused expression on her face.

“Is he retiring?”

“Sort of. Forced retirement. City charter says four consecutive terms max. This is Rossi’s fourth term.”

“Oh.” Athen slanted a glance in Diana’s direction.

It was as close as she had ever been to the woman with whom her father had kept company for so many years. Athen didn’t know for certain how many. Ari had never discussed Diana with his daughter. It had been John who’d mentioned his father-in-law’s relationship with the young woman as if Athen had known about it. She had not.

Athen had been shocked when she learned that her
father was seeing a woman who was only ten years older than Athen herself. Secretly, she hadn’t been certain that what she’d felt wasn’t jealousy as much as shock, but she’d never been sure if she was jealous because her father had found someone else to fill his hours, or if she was offended because it was part of his life he would not share with his daughter.