Bless the Child (26 page)

Man is a rope stretched between

the animal and the Superman—

a rope over an abyss.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I
thought I’d just stop by to see how it’s going with you, Maggie.” Devlin said the words as he stood in her foyer. She smiled a little wanly and led him toward the parlor.

“I’ll tell you how it’s going Dev,” she said ruefully. “I’m beginning to feel like my life is one of those headlines in the supermarket—you know—“Two-Headed Baby Kills 18, Then Self.’ A series of impossible absurdities.”

He laughed, shortly.

“If you’re a cop long enough, Maggie, you realize everybody’s life is like that. Like the man said, life is a tale told by an idiot. Tragedy or triumph, depending on the day . . . but never what you were expecting. Look at my life—it’s not exactly right out of
Father Knows Best.”

Maggie smiled at him indulgently; she’d grown to like this man very much in the short time she’d known him.

“What
was
life like for you, when you were a boy, Dev?” she asked, settling cross-legged on the end of the big couch and motioning him to sit down. “You’re such a remarkable jumble of ingredients . . . I’ve fantasized all sorts of interesting beginnings about you.”

He smiled. It always seemed to her like sunlight after rain, when he did; sudden and unexpected. She wondered if there was much in his life to smile about.

“Growing up in the South Bronx,” he answered her, “you might say my education consisted of equal parts sex, religion, and the gentlemanly art of self-defense. The religion was compliments of the nuns, the sex was compliments of the sixties, and the pugilism I learned from having to walk eight blocks to school through the Italian and Polish neighborhoods, where Irish charm held little attraction for the natives.”

Maggie realized Devlin always made her laugh.

“My family was Democrat, of course, because the Democratic party fed us when times were tough, and got work for all the boys in the family. Democrat isn’t a political choice in a poor neighborhood, Maggie, just a fact of life. Nobody ever heard of a Republican coming around with a food basket to a widow, or getting her kid out of the slammer.” He laughed good-naturedly. “Come to think of it, nobody ever heard of a Republican.”

She liked to hear him talk. His speech was an intriguing amalgam of street smarts, and unexpected poetry . . . the unstudied cadence of a street minstrel.

“I grew up . . . went to Nam because I thought I was supposed to, and because the other guys were going, I suppose. That’s when I found out about the wider world.” He shook his head as if to say, not even the Bronx could prepare you for that kind of brutality.

“I was just a kid . . . and pretty idealistic back then,” he said. “It was a real shock to see man’s inhumanity to man on such a visceral level. You know, when you live through a nightmare like Nam, you always question, afterward, why you survived. Why me, God? and not Jimmy, or Fredo, or Petrie? Why did I get out? What do you want from me in return? It was the questioning that led me to the poetry, crazy as that sounds. In that godforsaken swamp, it was the only way to affirm life, I guess, and the possibility that beauty might still exist somewhere.” He shook his head again, the pain of memory in his eyes.

“I’d always been a fanatic about reading—and imagining things different from the way they were for us. I got that from my mother, I guess . . . a sense that poverty wasn’t all there was to life, and that anything was possible.” He was silent for a time.

“Anyway, I went to school when I got back . . . did pretty well, actually. I had this sense of urgency about time, because of all the death I’d seen. I already had a year of law school under my belt, when I married Jan. That’s when I joined the force, Maggie. The military training seemed applicable, and it offered security of a certain kind . . . and a chance to do some good in a crummy world.” He sighed.

“I kept on with night school, when I could. It took a long time. In some ways, the discipline of it kept me going, when things got bad . . . kept my mind in order, when the chaos settled in.”

“Did you ever intend to practice law?” she asked, touched and curious.

He looked at her, before answering; there was an intensity in his eyes, a longing to be understood, without having to explain.
You’ll know me, if you’re the one, it said. You’ll understand what can never be explained.

“I don’t know the answer to that question, Maggie, I loved the law . . . the order, the intelligence, the civilizing force of it. But the expediency of how it’s practiced really left me cold. Police work has a gut-level satisfaction to it. I
like
being a detective. I’m good at it. Sometimes, I even get to see justice done. I never got that feeling with the law. Justice always seemed to be up to her ass in the mire.”

“So detecting let you make the system work, and lawyering made you feel it didn’t?”

Something like that.”

“Is it a good life for you, Dev? From the outside, it looks hard and unrelenting.”

He had his hands pushed far down in his pockets, as he leaned back into the couch cushions. His eyes were full of memories. “Sometimes . . .” he said, taking a deep, eloquent, breath.

“There was this one case . . .” he said hesitantly. “Every cop has one that stays with him, Maggie. This one was mine. We got called to this tenement because neighbors heard screams. In the living room we found what was left of a young woman . . . dead, raped, mutilated. I was the first cop into the bedroom.” He paused. “There was this big teddy bear—the kind you win at carnivals—sitting on a bed all soaked with blood. It was moving. There was a little kid behind it. A little girl. She was maybe three . . . whimpering, too weak to cry, but still trying to hide herself from ‘the bad man.’ She’d been stabbed a dozen times and her belly’d been ripped open.” It was easy to see how haunted he was by the memory.

“Christ, I remember wanting to take her in my arms, to tell her it was going to be alright . . . but I was afraid to touch her, the wounds were so grim. So, I held her hand, and just wouldn’t let it go. You wouldn’t believe the strength in those little fingers . . .” There were tears in his eyes. He swiped at them, with the back of his hand.

“I used to go to the hospital every day to see her, after work. She was so little in the hospital bed, all hooked up to a thousand tubes and monitors. She was in a coma the whole time, but I used to talk to her, Maggie, sing to her. I figured the other guys would think I was crazy. But they didn’t. It took her a week to die.” He sighed. “When it happened, I was grateful to God, because no one could live with what had been done to her. No one should have to.”

He leaned his head against the couch, staring at the ceiling. “It took a long, long time to get the guy who did it,” he said.

“What a godawful world you live in, Dev,” Maggie breathed, moved and saddened. “And, yet you seem so able to believe in happy endings . . .”

He smiled, suddenly, and looked straight at her. “More importantly, I believe in happy middles.”

“What does that mean?”

“That you can’t always live for the future. In my job, Maggie, today is all there is. You have to learn to take from it what you joy you can.”

Maggie stared at Devlin, wondering what it was she felt about him. He niggled at her, in disturbing, unexpected ways, and he made her feel protected, as if someone again cared what happened to her. There was substance to this man, who’d been so tempered by the wisdom hardship brings; deep-down strength and fortitude, of the kind that endures.

She found she always watched him carefully when they were together, now, wanting to learn more, a little afraid of being hurt to the heart, if she ever did. He had that unruly mane of shaggy brown hair, that was somehow lovable, for it made him boyish, beneath the tough exterior. And there was a laser quality to his spirit, that cut away the dross.

She could tell, never having been to bed with him, exactly what he would be like there. A relentless fact of nature, powerful, urgent, beneath the tousled, brooding merriment. There was a rhythm to their talking now; it began each time where it had left off the last. It would be the same in bed.

Maggie was a little shocked by her own thoughts and forcibly pulled herself back from where they were headed. How did ramblings like these square with whatever it was she felt for Peter?

“What do you think I should do, now, Dev?” she asked, pushing the rest away. “How can I find my way out of this maze?” He could hear the need in her voice, the ache, and something else, not quite definable.

“I think you should let me do what I know how to do, Maggie,” he said evenly. “The law won’t be on your side in this, unless I can prove some of the dirt I’m scooping up about Vannier. When I do, you can make a case for getting Cody back. Without evidence, you don’t have a prayer.”

“Have you found anything at all yet, that can help us?”

He averted his eyes. “I’ve found enough to know what I’m looking at . . . not enough to be considered evidence. Police work takes time. Especially if it’s not an official investigation. I know how hard this is for you, Maggie, but you have to be patient. It may seem like eternity to you, but Cody’s only been gone eight weeks.”

Maggie was so still he thought he could hear her heart beat; then she said softly, carefully, “Every day, Dev, I wake up thinking, Is she hurt? Is she dead? Is she a Screamer, now, too? How long must every day seem to that child? How terrifying is every night?”

His eyes locked with hers for a silent moment.

“I hear you, Maggie,” he said hoarsely. “I really hear you.”

J
enna was seated at her elaborate dressing table, naked. There was much to admire in what she saw in the antique mirror. A trifle too thin, perhaps, but the full proud breasts seemed adequate compensation for that deficiency. Cody’s birth hadn’t slackened her belly, and the track marks didn’t show nearly as much since she’d started shooting up between her toes and in other creative places. She’d spent the better part of the morning experimenting with hair and makeup. She pursed her lips and admired their glossy pout, then frowned as she noticed an errant eyebrow hair. Jenna plucked the offender and reexamined her brows with the care of a brain surgeon seeking errant ganglia. She had all the time in the world to devote to being beautiful.

Ghania swept into the room without knocking, and crossed to Jenna’s dressing room. She appeared to ignore the nakedness of the lady of the house, but, in truth, she cast a practiced eye over the near-perfect form. She had always chosen the bodies for Eric’s bed, ever since he’d left her own, and this was one of the finest physical specimens she’d found on this continent.

Ghania deposited Cody on the floor near Jenna’s bench and the child ran gratefully to her mother, scrambling up onto her lap to seek comfort. “Hello, my gorgeous little darling!” Jenna cooed, with theatrical enthusiasm. She hugged and kissed the child noisily, and made a great display of delight in her arrival. Ghania stood patiently nearby, watching the game; she knew it was always momentary.

“Shall I leave your daughter with you for the morning, Madame Vannier?” the Amah asked with mock subservience, but Jenna missed the nuance of inflection.

“Oh, I’d love to mind her, Ghania, really I would,” Jenna replied with a languid smile, “but I’m awfully busy right now. You know how Eric likes me to look perfect all the time, and my nails are just a mess. Couldn’t you keep an eye on her for me?”

Understanding fully that Mommy intended to send her away again, Cody wrapped her arms around Jenna and squeezed hard. She hardly ever saw her mother anymore, but when she did, they had fun. For a minute or two. And, Mommy was infinitely better to be around than Ghania. Mommy never hurt her . . . except that she made her feel sad, sometimes.

“I want to play with you, Mommy,” Cody said plaintively. “Please, Mommy. Please let me stay with you!”

Jenna swooped the little girl up in the air and covered her with quick kisses, being careful not to mess her own makeup.

“I love you
so
much, baby,” she exclaimed dramatically. “But Mommy is awfully busy right now. Daddy’s coming home in any minute, and we have a big dinner party tonight, and Mommy has to look just right.” As she was talking, Jenna was deftly untangling herself from Cody, one little arm or leg at a time, and pushing her toward the nanny. Ghania reached for the child, and her hand brushed Jenna’s nipple in passing. It could have been accidental.

Realizing the futility of further protest, Cody went into Ghania’s arms, the hurt of rejection evident on her small face.

Jenna threw kisses as they departed . . . then she breathed a sigh of relief as she heard their footsteps’ diminishing sound. She stretched lazily and touched her own nipple lingeringly; Ghania’s hand had awakened her to possibilities. Later she would request a massage like Ghania. Just the thought of it excited her and she felt herself dampen. But, for now, there were other, more urgent needs.

Jenna opened the drawer to her night table, and all the paraphernalia of her addiction lay before her in pleasing disarray; burnt spoon, white powder, Evian water, and a small kerosene burner. She examined her arms and hands critically, looking for a suitable vein, then remembering that the scar mustn’t show or Eric would be livid, she finally settled on a leg vein mostly hidden from view, and proceeded to inject enough heroin into her body to blot out all that wasn’t quite perfect in her new life.

She had heard Cody’s screams at Ghania’s hands . . . she had visited the cellar . . . she had participated in rituals better left unremembered. But there wasn’t really anything she could do about it all today, she thought, as she drifted into pleasant oblivion. And the compensations of life with Eric were worth the trade-off.

Minutes passed. She was feeling stronger now . . . and freer. And very, very smart. Smart enough to figure the whole thing out.

Perhaps a little later.