All Our Yesterdays (29 page)

“I could have done without the ‘still,’” Laura said.

“Sorry, but you are. And you deserve some affection. Daddy appears to have no interest in you.”

“Perhaps I too am some sort of functional necessity.”

“Do you love him?” Grace said.

Laura was quiet, thinking about the question. She knew the answer, she was speculating on what to say to a child about her father.

“No,” Laura said. “I don’t. I guess I never did.”

“Well, the hell with him,” Grace said. “Find someone to love. You deserve to have someone to love you.”

Laura nodded slowly.

“What will you do?” she said.

“I have done it already. I left.”

“Though you love him,” Laura said.

“Though I think I love him. It scares me. I’m so worried about him that I feel like I can’t breathe. But something has to break the logjam. We can’t be happy
if something doesn’t; and I can’t think of anything else to do.”

“That seems very brave to me,” Laura said.

“I know what I want and I know it is okay to want it, and I will get it. If not with Chris, then with someone else. That’s up to Chris. I can live without Chris. He has to be able to live without me. Then maybe we can live with each other.”

There was a light wind outside, and it tossed the budding flowers in the garden and riffled the leaves of the low shrubs. Two sparrows splashed in the bird-bath.

“What about Daddy?” Grace said.

“He’ll barely notice.”

“How do you think Cabot will feel?” Grace said. “The election and all.”

“Cabot wants to please his father,” Laura said. “For himself, he would be happy to play tennis, drink martinis, and fuck every woman who walks erect.”

“Mother!”

“It’s true, Grace. Your brother is a lovely boy, but his interests are simple.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.”

“I always tried not to in front of you.”

“Cabot’s just doing it for Daddy?”

Laura nodded.

“So why doesn’t Daddy run himself, if he is so hung up on the Senate?”

“He feels that there are things in his past,” Laura said.

“What things?”

Laura shook her head.

“You don’t know?” Grace said.

Laura shook her head again.

“I never asked,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It seemed to me that a good wife shouldn’t ask,” Laura said. “Though I know that is not the current correct definition of a good wife.”

Grace held her teacup in two hands and took a small sip. She kept the cup there at her lips and stared at her mother over the rim.

“Maybe not,” Grace said. “But you’ve been a hell of a mother.”

“I have wanted to be. It has been what mattered.”

“Only that?”

Laura was quiet as she thought about the question. Then she nodded.

“Only that,” she said.

“Oh, Mother,” Grace said, and put her hand across the table. Laura took it and held it in both of hers.

“We’ll be all right,” Laura said. “We’ll be fine.”

G
us met Laura Winslow for a drink in the bar at the Ritz-Carlton. They sat in the window that looked out onto Arlington Street, with the Public Garden beyond. She ordered a glass of merlot. Gus had Scotch and soda.

“I love this room,” Laura said.

Gus nodded.

“But I don’t get here often,” Laura said.

“Me either,” Gus said.

The waiter brought them a small bowl of nuts. Gus pushed the bowl closer to Laura.

“Oh, God,” Laura said. “Save me from myself.”

Gus smiled and took some nuts. Laura glanced around the bar.

“Are you wearing a gun?” Laura said.

Gus smiled again. “Always,” he said, “except with my jammies.”

“Probably not many other people in here wearing one,” Laura said.

“No,” Gus said.

There was a pause. Outside the window was a steady coming and going of taxicabs.

“We don’t know each other very well,” Laura said.

Gus nodded.

“But our families are so intertwined,” Laura said. “And I’ve always—I’ve always thought we liked each
other, even though we didn’t know each other very well.”

Laura’s face was smooth and well made up. Her blue eyes were unusually large, and wide apart. There were small pleasant crow’s-feet at the corners. Her mouth was wide, and carefully done, framed with faint parenthetical smile lines. She was trim and looked healthy, like someone who exercised a lot out of doors. Gus had always thought that her lower lip was sensuous.

“I like you, Laura,” he said.

“And I like you.”

“Perfect,” Gus said. “Let’s elope.”

Laura smiled.

“What about the kids, Gus?”

“Let them elope on their own,” Gus said.

He felt lighter with Laura Winslow than he ever felt. He always thought of bubble bath when he thought of her, and silk lingerie and high-priced perfume. The joke about eloping teased him.

“That doesn’t seem to be their plan,” Laura said.

“Not at the moment,” Gus said.

“It’s why I wanted us to talk.”

Gus nodded. His drink was gone. So was hers. He signaled the waiter.

“Tommy can’t talk about such things,” Laura said, “And I don’t seem really to know Peggy.”

How kindly put
, Gus thought. The waiter brought their drinks.

“So I thought maybe you and I should talk.”

Gus nodded. He sipped some of the Scotch. Outside the window, across Arlington Street, tourists with children were trailing through the Public Garden toward the swan boats. He leaned back a little in his
chair. The Ritz bar. The elegant face across from him. The perfect Scotch and soda. The unhurried late afternoon still waiting. He felt the tight coil of himself loosen.

“About my son and your daughter,” Gus said.

“Yes.”

“What’s to say?”

“Does Chris love her?”

Gus was quiet, thinking about it. This beautiful woman was talking to him about the one thing that mattered to him.

“I think he does, but I don’t think I know enough about love, Laura, to make much of a judgment.”

“That’s too bad, Gus.”

Gus shrugged. He wondered exactly how much Laura knew about love. He wondered how much she knew about Tommy.
How could she love a creep like Tommy?

“So, what do you think, does she love him?” Gus said.

“She says she loves him.” Laura spoke softly. “But people don’t always understand themselves. I’m afraid I have some of the same limitations you do.”

Laura’s face was full of intelligence, and decency. Gus felt excited. It was not a feeling he was used to. And he wasn’t sure why he was feeling it now.

“Lot of people have that limitation.”

“Love is hard,” Laura said.

Gus took another drink. He felt as if he needed it, and a deep breath before he spoke again.

“It would help to have firsthand knowledge,” he said.

Laura picked up her glass of red wine and studied it before she drank some. A trace of it remained on her
upper lip, nearly the color of her lipstick. She blotted it with the corner of a napkin.

“And it’s necessary,” she said.

“For what?”

“For happiness.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “It probably is.”

They were quiet. Gus drank his drink and ordered another. Laura still had half a glass left and shook her head at the waiter.

“We talking about the kids?” Gus said.

Laura smiled at him.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know exactly where we end and they begin.”

The room had begun to fill up now, with men in name brand suits and women in designer dresses. The noise was subdued. A lot of martinis went by on small trays, crystalline in their little decanters. Outside the afternoon had darkened to a blue tone, and taxicabs had turned on their lights. Gus picked up his fresh drink. It was clear amber in the muted light, full of ice, in a tall glass. He made a small
salud
gesture toward Laura with the glass, and drank. It tasted right. It was surprising how many bartenders didn’t get it right. If there was too much Scotch it tasted harsh. If there was too much soda it tasted thin.

“So,” he said. “You got a plan?”

“No,” she said.

“I’d like to see them together,” Gus said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I don’t either, Gus. But we can try to stay in touch, talk, share a viewpoint. Be there for them. Maybe we can help.”

“Or maybe it’s none of our Goddamned business,” Gus said softly, “and we should butt out.”

Laura smiled. “Maybe,” she said.

She kept her eyes on him while she twirled her wineglass by the stem slowly on the table.

He smiled. “I think we should talk,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t do them any good. I like it.”

“Yes,” Laura said.

“Want to make a date?” Gus said.

“This time Tuesdays is good for me,” Laura said. “I’m in town anyway for a New England Rep board meeting.”

“Okay,” Gus said. “You need a ride anywhere?”

“No, thank you, the doorman has my car.”

Gus motioned for the check.

“So,” Laura said as they waited. “If we were going to elope, where would we go?”

Gus grinned at her.

“I know the houseman here, I could get us a room upstairs.”

Laura laughed aloud. The waiter smiled as he brought them the check. A good-looking older couple, enjoying themselves. Nice to see.

C
hris stood near the subway kiosk on the edge of the vast brick plaza in front of City Hall. Around him was a hubbub of microphones, television cameras, sound equipment, reporters, still photographers, newspaper reporters, tape recorders, and notebooks.

“Obviously,”—Chris was reading a prepared statement—“this is a criminal gesture of open defiance. It will not divert us from our course. The investigation of this brutal war will proceed the way criminal investigations must—with diligence, with care, and with patience.”

Gus stood past him near the front entrance to City Hall, among the cluster of squad cars and the unmarked cruisers where the tarpaulin-covered body lay. Gus was proud of Chris. The statement was a little ornate, but it was less full of shit than most things said at City Hall.

“We cannot,” Chris was saying, “conduct an investigation in the press. We cannot be guided by the wishes of the media. We must be guided by the rules of evidence, and the facts of each crime. We are as eager as anyone in the Commonwealth to halt the killing and tiring the killers to justice…. Questions?”

Many of the questions were about the effect of these murders on Flaherty’s candidacy. Chris answered everything calmly and well, Gus thought, considering
that he knew who was responsible for the murders, couldn’t prove it, and knew in fact that the gang war was ruining Flaherty’s campaign, and couldn’t do much about it.
Kid’s a politician
, Gus smiled.
Where did I go wrong?

This killing worried him. They had dumped this body in front of City Hall, scornful of the new special prosecutor, scornful of Flaherty. It was a statement and Gus didn’t think it was aimed at the mayor.
They don’t care about Flaherty
, Gus thought.
This is for me
. He didn’t even know who had done it yet. They hadn’t ID’d the body. It was Butchie’s turn, but that didn’t always hold.
Whichever it was, I’m in their pocket
, Gus thought.
And they’re reminding me
. What bothered him most was that suddenly what he was and how he lived would spill over on his son.

Billy Callahan stood with Gus, watching Chris talk to the press.

“This is a real fuck-you to the mayor, Captain,” he said.

Gus nodded, watching Chris.

“Hear the question that guy from Channel Three asked him?” Callahan said. “Did he have ballistic match on the murder weapon. Fucking stiff still here. He figure we’re going to dig the fucking bullets out with a fucking jackknife?”

“He heard it on
Perry Mason
,” Gus said. “He doesn’t know what it means.”

“Chris’s doing good,” Callahan said.

“Yes.”

“He’s a smart boy, Captain.”

“He’s a smart man, Billy.”

“Yeah, sure, no offense, I just meant how he’s your
kid, you know, and after a while everyone seems like a kid, you know?”

“I know.”

Chris ended the questioning and walked over toward Gus. The reporter who’d asked about ballistics trailed along with a camera crew.

“Isn’t it well known that this is a war between the O’Briens and the Malloys?”

Chris shook his head as he stood beside his father.

“No more questions,” he said.

The reporter pushed in closer with his microphone, the camera crew following.

“Do you have anyone under surveillance?”

Again Chris shook his head.

“Enough,” he said.

The reporter pushed between Gus and Billy Callahan.

“Dr. Sheridan—”

Billy Callahan was very quick for a man his size. He turned sharply into the reporter, caught the reporter in the middle of the chest with his right elbow, and sent him sprawling.

“Oh,” Billy said, “I beg your pardon.”

He bent over the reporter.

“You startled me, are you all right?”

The reporter said, “Jesus Christ.”

Gus walked with his son toward the car.

“Billy has his moments, doesn’t he?” Chris said.

Gus smiled.

“He does, in fact,” he said.

T
hey were standing on the fish pier, watching the fishing boats unload. After their third meeting at the Ritz bar, Laura suggested they try meeting in parts of the city she didn’t usually get to.

“I’ve never been here,” she said.

The harbor water was black and around the pier it floated a lot of debris. Gulls swooped frantically around the fishing boats, landing on the pier and strutting in perilous proximity to the people. The press of the sun was heavy. The smell of fish was strong. There was a wind off the water, that moved Laura’s hair.

“Lot of people in the suburbs don’t get into the city,” Gus said.

Laura laughed. She had on big sunglasses like Jackie Onassis. And a white summer dress and white high heels.