Cartwheel (20 page)

The Kellerses were announced, and moments later they appeared—mother, father, and remaining daughter, all huddled in a little unit.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” said Eduardo, extending his hand to Mr. Kellers. This was the truest thing, and the most important thing to say, and so it came first.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Kellers. He took Eduardo’s hand slowly, as though he were moving through water, though his handshake, when it finally came, was firm. His wife and daughter hung behind him. They were small and fair and wore expensive-looking yoga clothes—soft gray workout pullovers that looked like they were made of cashmere, form-fitting black breathable fabrics that clung to their shapely hindquarters. The whole family gave off some kind of sleek Los Angeles glamour even though, as Eduardo kept having to remind people, none of them were in the movie business. Glamour must have been in the air out in California; at a certain point, one absorbed and internalized and metabolized it. And Eduardo could see how telegenic this family would be, how tearful and wholesome; he could see how, in their press conferences, they would almost certainly say the right things. It was not cynical to notice this. It was Eduardo’s job to notice this. And the only way he could help the Kellerses now was by doing his job very, very well.

Eduardo ushered the family into chairs and offered them glasses of water. They responded with syncopated thank-yous, vacant and reflexive. When you looked at them more closely, the wages of their grief became more apparent. The sister’s lips were so dry they looked nearly shattered. The mother’s hair, pulled back tight into a ponytail, had clearly gone without its touch-up dye job for longer than was typical; a
few stray hairs, white and brittle, fanned out from the part in her hair, where Eduardo could see a few blushes of skull, pink as the interior of a seashell.

His heart broke for all of them.

As quickly as possible, Eduardo explained to them the contours of the case—his belief in Lily Hayes’s involvement, the certainty of another person’s, his confidence that he was on the verge of putting the entire puzzle together. The Kellerses nodded in staggered nods, baffled and bereft.

After he had explained everything he could, Eduardo attempted a few forays at small talk (how had their flight been, and what arrangements had been made, and could they tell him a little bit about Katy—this last elicited such a soul-rending whimper from the mother that Eduardo found himself leaning away from her, as though he could somehow physically retract the question). At a certain point, Katy’s sister began crying quietly, and the way her mother comforted her—giving half-conscious strokes that disowned with every gesture the idea that any of this could actually be made survivable, while quietly beginning to cry herself—made it clear to Eduardo that this was a scene that had been repeated many times already, and would continue long after they were back in Los Angeles and their part here had been concluded.

On their way out the door, Mr. Kellers paused. “How long have you been doing this work?” It did not sound challenging. He was just trying to keep track of all the new realities. That was his job.

“Seven years,” said Eduardo.

“Do you get a lot of convictions?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Kellers nodded crisply, as though pleased with a purchase, though both he and Eduardo knew that he had no choice about Eduardo.

“We’ll meet in a few days,” said Eduardo. “Once you’ve all settled in and have had a chance to process things a bit.”

They nodded. Eduardo walked them out to their rental car. Mrs. Kellers produced sunglasses from her bag; they were huge and ornate, a throwback to less utilitarian times than these. The sister did not have any, and she looked painfully away—Eduardo had to think on purpose—into the sun’s wretched brightness.

By the time Eduardo got home that night, a storm was starting. It was only seven o’clock, and he peered warily into the yawning maw of the evening; he could feel the black edge of depression clamping down on his shoulders already. Sometimes he thought of it as weather, and sometimes as a wild beast. Most often he thought of it as the lid of an enormous pot in which he was being set to boil; sometimes—like tonight—he could almost hear it clattering above him.

The wind was making heaving sounds, shuddery and mechanical, and the air smelled vaguely brackish. Eduardo gazed out the window into the rapidly descending darkness. He suddenly felt that he was staring into, or out of, a great shroud. He shivered and went upstairs to turn on the television. There was a thumping sound from somewhere downstairs, and he congratulated himself for not jumping. He went to close the windows in the bedroom. There was another thumping sound, this one undeniable. Perhaps the house was being robbed; perhaps a disgruntled former defendant had come back, finally, to kill him. Eduardo considered this possibility with abstract interest, then went downstairs.

Standing just outside the open door, her hair streaming wet, was Maria.

“Can I come in?” she said. Her face was electric, aflame within the wild dendrites of her hair. Eduardo felt as though he’d been slammed into a wall. He stepped away from the door to let her inside.

“I’m sorry. I still had a key,” she said irrelevantly, holding it up and then falling into Eduardo’s arms. He held her numbly. Because of the rain on her face, it was very hard to tell if she’d been crying.

“What’s happened?” he said. “Are you okay?”

She looked up at him and laughed a little. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her mouth was full and dark. “Do you mind if I take off my shoes? They’re wet.”

“Everything you’re wearing is wet.”

“You’re so literal.”

Maria kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot to the window. Her dress was plastered to her body. She was dripping on the carpet but did not seem to notice.

“What’s wrong?” said Eduardo. She needed money, probably. If she did, he would not need or want to ask why. If she said she needed it, he would believe her. Everybody should have someone whose belief in them is unwavering, unconditional, always. “Do you need money?” he said. “Is that it?”

Maria shimmied her head in a gesture that was neither affirmative nor negative—it was more like she was shaking water out of her ear, or a thought out of her head. She turned and stared out the window for a moment, and by the time she turned back her mood seemed to have already shifted. Eduardo knew better than to be surprised.

“Doesn’t it look like magic outside?” she said.

“It looks like a storm outside.”

Eduardo had never believed in Maria’s sign reading and portents and impulses; toward the end, he had stopped pretending to try, and most of the time statements of this kind provoked something terribly decretory and disappointed from her. But this time she just looked at him and clapped her hands and said, “Oh, but storms
are
magic!”

Eduardo shook his head. Either everything was magical or nothing was. “Do you want to take a shower or something?” he said. “You must be freezing.”

Maria ignored this and turned back to the window. “I hear you’ve got a big case,” she said. “That murderer of yours is gorgeous. Don’t you think so?”

Eduardo shrugged. He had never found Lily Hayes beautiful, particularly, though he respected her alleged beauty’s effect on the case: If
she was thought to be beautiful, then indeed she was. “Is that why you’re back?” he said.

It had crossed his mind once or twice, it was true—the acclaim that might come with a conviction, the way it might hoist him up in Maria’s esteem. The way it might make her see, finally—but then, he did not know, really, what it was he thought she’d see.

Her face froze for a moment, and then she pouted and smiled. “Aren’t you glad I’m back?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to stay?”

She shrugged. “Did that girl do it?”

“Yes.”

“I think so, too,” she said with sudden fervor. “Girls are strange.” Her eyes were like black little embers now, bright and fierce. She laughed once, manically, girlishly. “But then again,” she said, “maybe not. Maybe she really didn’t do it. Do you ever think about that, Eduardo? About what if she didn’t do it?”

She shimmered over to him and began nibbling his ear. Eduardo felt a sickening sense of suspension. “Maybe she didn’t, Eduardo. Wouldn’t that be tragic?”

He should not, and yet it did not matter if he did. He’d only be left with his own solitary ruined heart either way. “It would certainly be tragic if she didn’t do it,” said Eduardo formally. He covered his ear protectively so that she would stop nibbling it. “But I assure you that it’s also very, very unlikely.”

“She fulfills a certain role, though, don’t you think?” Maria moved away from him and crossed her arms. “She’s got a symbolic function. She animates certain feelings. She’s like the sacrificial virgin. Or the sacrificial whore.”

“You’re not talking seriously,” said Eduardo. “I understand what you’re saying, but you’re not being serious. You’re not really talking about this particular girl. You’re speaking very abstractly right now.”

Maria sighed, delicately and emphatically. “I’m just musing, of course. You’re probably right. I’m sure you’re right, Eduardo. I have never known a man of as much generosity as you.”

Eduardo knew in his heart that this could not be true. And yet, here she was. She was here. Her face was sweet and even. How could he not almost believe it was true? It took so much strength not to believe it.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, and he gathered her into his arms. Her smell was heart piercing; it did violence to all other memories. She kissed him on the neck. Perhaps this was manipulation, but Eduardo did not want to be cynical enough to be sure. He was open to being wounded. He was willing to be wrong. This was, he thought, the cost of being alive.

“You’re so good to me,” said Maria, as he carried her up the stairs to the bedroom. She sighed. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said, as he turned out the light.

He could have left it there—he could have backed out of the room and tiptoed down the stairs to pour a tumbler of whiskey and marvel at the stunning luck of his own life—but he did not. He waited for a moment in the darkness. He wavered.

“Maria,” he said finally. “How much is it that you need?”

She sighed again. “Oh, Eduardo,” she said. He could hear her burrowing further into the sheets. “It’s kind of a lot.”

The next day, Eduardo awoke to even breathing. Beside him, Maria was a hummock of sheet crowned by a spray of dark hair. Strips of light from the window, fat and white as candles, were flattening themselves on the floor. And Eduardo felt a quiet elation that quickly turned to energy. He wanted to go to work.

He would not have expected this from himself. He would not have imagined that, having somehow conjured Maria’s return, he would be willing to even momentarily leave her again—let alone that he would actually
want
to go back to the jail to listen to the tearful exegesis of a murderous postadolescent’s life. Eduardo’s work was performed from love, but it was a very abstract love; he would have predicted that, blessed once more with a love that was concrete—that was sleeping right beside him—he would retreat, immediately and gratefully, into
happy selfishness. He would have expected himself to want only to lie here now, lazy with his own luck, and let himself forget about the dead.

But he didn’t. Eduardo looked at Maria, and now, more than ever, he wanted to help them. Ever since he’d met her, of course, Maria had been the compass he followed when charting paths to unimaginable sorrow. He’d known that it was important to have some emotional access point when dealing with victims’ families, and so when he talked with them, he’d often spent a moment or two (a moment or two was all he could stand) contemplating what it would be like to lose Maria to violence. He had imagined the phone call, the terrible certainty he was somehow terribly certain he would somehow feel. But then she had left him, and now she was back, and the miracle of her return made more vivid to Eduardo, somehow, the unfathomability of her permanent disappearance. He thought of his grief over the past months, and he saw how shallow it had really been; now when he thought of the Kellerses—the father’s slumped shoulders, the mother’s shattered face—he could suddenly imagine, more acutely than ever before, a sadness that would truly be unending. He could imagine their unendurable rage, and the way they’d have to live in that rage in order to live at all. And he could imagine—finally, fully, with a terrible clarity—their need to have all of this witnessed. Eduardo had always known that victims’ families were not motivated by revenge—some kind of biblical, primordial desire for hurt to accompany hurt—and he had always believed that society was built on a question of witness. But never before now—as he sat gazing at his sleeping Maria—had he felt so fully the power of a love that kept looking. All these years later, the Mothers still congregated daily at the Plaza del Mayo, wearing their white shawls. This is what Maria would teach him.

Eduardo rose and went to the kitchen. He left out some fruit and instant coffee alongside a note saying that he would be back that evening. He was halfway out the door before he turned around and went back upstairs, pulled out his wedding ring from the box where he’d kept it, and put it on.

·  ·  ·

At the jail, Lily Hayes looked worse already, somehow. Her hair was duller, her eyes more glassine; there were pockets of gray underneath them, as though she’d been stroked lightly by ash. Grimy yellow light from the window cut strange angles on her face. Whether or not Lily Hayes had ever been beautiful, there was no denying the swiftness of her unraveling: She was simply no longer the girl who’d stood in front of the Basílica Nuestra Señora de Luján, wearing nothing, inebriated with her own youth. Eduardo was always amazed at how contingent good health and looks and spirits were; most people tended to look terrible and act even worse after just a few days in a jail, and Eduardo routinely left his interviews deeply unsure of the durability of character. The truth was, he did not know how he’d fare in Lily’s shoes. The other truth was, he did not want to know. The final truth was, he would never do anything that would force him to find out, and this ignorance was the reward—and maybe the only sure reward—of virtue.