Company Man (21 page)

He set the omelet on the table before her, a fork and a paper napkin, a mug of tea. The mug, he noticed too late, had the old 1970s Stratton logo on one side.

She dug into it, eating ravenously.

“When's the last time you ate today?” Nick asked.

“Right now,” she said. “I forgot to eat.”

“Forgot?”

“I've had other things on my mind. Hey, this isn't bad.”

“Thank you.”

“I wouldn't have figured you for a chef.”

“That's about the extent of my cooking ability.”

“I feel way better already. Thank you. I thought I was going to pass out.”

“You're welcome. I saw some salami in there, but I thought you might be a vegan or something.”

“Vegans don't eat eggs,” she said. “Yum. God, you know, there's some kinds of ribbon worms that actually eat themselves if they don't find any food.”

“Glad I got here in time.”

“The head of Stratton makes a mean omelet. Wait till the newspapers get hold of that.”

“So how did you end up in Chicago?”

“Long story. I grew up here. But my mom grew tired of my dad's craziness, when I was like nine or ten. That was be
fore he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. She moved to the Windy City and left me here with Dad. A couple of years later, I went to live with her and her new husband. Hey, this is my house, and I'm not being much of a hostess.”

She got up, went over to one of the lower cabinets, opened the door. It held a collection of dusty bottles, vermouth and Baileys Irish Cream and such. “Let me guess—you're a Scotch kinda guy.”

“I've got to get home to the kids.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right. Sure.” Something waiflike and needy in her face got to him. He'd told Marta an hour or so; another hour wouldn't be a big deal.

“But maybe a little Scotch would be okay.”

She seemed to light up, leaned over and pulled out a bottle of Jameson. “Irish, not Scotch—okay?”

“Fine with me.”

She pulled out a cut-glass tumbler from the same cabinet. “Whoo boy,” she said, blowing a cloud of dust out of it. She held it under the running tap in the sink. “I'm going to say rocks.”

“Hmm?”

“Ice cubes. You drink your whiskey on the rocks.” She went to the antique Frigidaire, opened the freezer, took out the kind of ice tray Nick hadn't seen in decades, aluminum with the lever you pull up to break the ice into cubes. She yanked back the handle, making a scrunching sound that sounded like his childhood. Reminded him of his dad, who liked his Scotch on the rocks, every night and too much of it.

She plopped a handful of jagged cubes into the glass, glugged in a few inches of whiskey, came over and handed it to him. She looked directly into his eyes, the first time she'd done that. Her eyes were big and gray-green and lucid, and Nick felt a tug in his groin. He immediately felt a flush of shame.
Jesus,
he thought.

“Thanks,” he said. The glass had
FAMOUS GROUSE
etched into it. It was the kind of thing you get at a liquor store packed with the bottle, a promotional deal.

“How about you?”

“I hate whiskey,” she said. The kettle began whistling shrilly. She pulled it off the burner, found a carton of teabags in a drawer, and poured herself a mug of herbal tea.

“How does it feel being home?” The whiskey had a pleasant bite to it, and he felt its effect immediately. He didn't recall when he'd last eaten anything himself, actually.

“Strange,” she said, sitting down at the table. “Brings a lot of things back. Some good things, some not good things.” She looked at him. “I don't expect you to understand.”

“Try me.”

“Do you know what it's like to have a parent with severe mental illness? The whole point is, you're a child, so you don't grasp what's going on.”

“Right. How could you?”

Cassie closed her eyes, and it was as if she were in some other place. “So you're his beloved daughter, and he hugs you like nobody can hug you and he puts his forehead to yours and you feel so safe, and so loved, and everything's right with the world. And then, one day, he's different—except, as far as he's concerned,
you're
different.”

“Because of the disease.”

“He looks at you and you're a stranger to him. You're not his beloved daughter now. Maybe you resemble her, but he's not fooled, he knows you've been replaced by someone or something else. He looks at you and he sees a Fembot, you know? And you say, ‘Daddy!' You're three or four or five and you throw your arms open, waiting for your super-special hug. And he says, ‘Who are you? Who are you
really
?' and he says, ‘Get away! Get away! Get away!'” Her mimicry was uncanny; Nick was beginning to glimpse the nightmare she had endured. “You realize that he's
terrified
of you. And it's different from anything you've ever experienced. Because it isn't what happens when, you know, you misbehave, and Mommy or Daddy turns red and you get yelled at. Every kid knows what that's like. They're mad. But you know they still love you, and they're still aware of your
existence
. They don't think you're an alien. They're not frightened of you. It's different when a parent has schizophrenia. It steals over
them, and suddenly you don't exist to them any longer. You're not a daughter anymore. Just some impostor. Just some intruder. Some…outsider. Someone who doesn't belong.” She smiled sadly.

“He was ill.”

“He was ill,” Cassie repeated. “But a child doesn't understand that. A child
can't
understand it. Even if anybody had explained to me, I probably wouldn't have understood.” She sniffed, her eyes flooded with tears. She frowned, turned away, wiped her eyes with her T-shirt, exposing her flat belly, a tiny pouting navel. Nick tried not to look.

“Nobody ever told you what was going on?”

“When I was maybe thirteen, I finally figured it out. My mother didn't want to deal, and her way of not dealing meant you didn't talk about it. Which is pretty crazy, too, when you think about it.”

“I can't imagine what you had to go through.” And he couldn't—not what she'd had to go through, nor what her father's death was causing her to relive. He ached to do something for her.

“No, you can't imagine. But it messes with your head. I mean, it messed with mine.”

She tucked her chin in close to her chest, ran her fingers through her spiky hair, and when she looked up, her cheeks were wet. “You don't need this,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I think you should go.”

“Cassie,” he said. It came out in a whisper, sounded far more intimate than he'd intended.

For a while, her breaths came in short little puffs. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “You need to be there for your kids,” she said. “There's nothing more important than family, okay?”

“Not much of a family these days.”

“Don't say that,” Cassie said. She looked up at him, eyes fierce. “You don't
fucking
talk that way,
ever
.” Something had flared up inside her, like a whole book of matches, and then subsided almost as quickly. But who could blame the
woman, having so recently put her father in the ground? And then he remembered why.

“Sorry,” he said. “It hasn't been easy for the kids, and I'm not exactly doing my job.”

“How'd she die?” Her voice was soft. “Their mother.”

He took another sip. A quick scene played in his head, jittery, badly spliced film. The pebbles of glass strewn throughout Laura's hair. The spiderwebbed windshield. “I don't like to talk about it.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize. Natural question.”

“No, you're—crying.”

He realized that he was, and as he turned his face, embarrassed, cursing the booze, she got up from her chair, came up to him. She put a small warm hand on his face, leaned close to him, and put her lips on his.

Startled, he backed away, but she moved in closer, pressed her lips against his, harder, her other hand pressed against his chest.

He turned his head away. “Cassie, I've got to get home.”

Cassie smiled uncomfortably. “Go,” she said. “Your kids are waiting.”

“It's the babysitter, actually. She hates it when I come home later than I promised.”

“Your daughter—what's her name, again?”

“Julia.”

“Julia. Sweet name. Go home to Julia and Luke. They need you. Go back to your gated community.”

“How'd you know?”

“People talk. It's perfect.”

“What?”

“You living in a gated community.”

“I'm not really the gated-community type.”

“Oh, I think you are,” she said. “More than you know.”

LaTonya's twelve-year-old daughter, Camille, was practicing piano in the next room, which made it hard for Audrey to concentrate on what her sister-in-law was saying. LaTonya was speaking in a low voice, uncharacteristically for her, while she removed a sweet-potato casserole from the oven.

“Let me tell you,” LaTonya said, “if Paul didn't have a steady income, I don't know how we'd get by with three kids still in the house.”

Audrey, who'd noticed the kitchen piled high with cartons of thermogenic fat-burning supplements, said, “But what about the vitamins?”

“Shit!” LaTonya shouted, dropping the casserole to the open oven door. “These damned oven mitts have a hole in them—what the hell good are they?”

Thomas, who was nine, ran in from the dining room where he and Matthew, eleven, were allegedly setting the table, though mostly just clattering the dishes and giggling. “You okay, Mom?”

“I'm fine,” LaTonya said, picking up the casserole again and putting it on the stovetop. “You get back out there and finish setting the table, and you tell Matthew to go tell your father and Uncle Leon to get off their lazy butts and come in
to dinner.” She turned to Audrey, a disgusted look on her face. “Once again, I'm ahead of the curve.”

“How so?”

“These thermogenic supplements. Fenwick is a backward, fearful community,” she said gravely. “They do
not
want to try new things.”

“And now you're stuck with all these bottles.”

“If they think I'm paying for them, they've got another think coming. I'm going to ask you to read the small print on my agreement, because I don't think they can get away with it.”

“Sure,” Audrey said without enthusiasm. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved in extricating LaTonya from another mess she'd created. “You know, the money isn't the worst part,” Audrey said. “I mean, it's not easy, but we can get by.”

“Not having kids,” LaTonya pointed out.

“Right. It's dealing with Leon.”

“What the
hell
does he do all day?” LaTonya demanded, one hand on her left hip, waggling the other hand to cool it off.

“He watches a lot of TV and he drinks,” Audrey said.

“You see, I knew this would happen. We spoiled him growing up. The baby of the family. Anything he wanted, he got. My momma and me, we waited on him hand and foot, and now you're paying the price. You hear what I hear?”

“I don't hear anything.”

“Exactly.” She shouted, earsplittingly loud, “Camille, you've got twenty more minutes of practicing, so don't stop now!”

An anguished, garbled protest came from the next room.

“And you don't get any supper until you're done, so
move
it!” She glowered at Audrey. “Honestly, I don't know what's wrong with her ownself. She pays me no mind at all.”

 

Dinner was meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, collards, and sweet-potato casserole, everything heavy and greasy but de
licious. Leon sat next to his sister at one end of the table, LaTonya's husband at the other, the two squirming boys on one side facing Audrey and Camille's empty place.

The sound of the piano came from the living room, sporadic, sullen. Brahms, Audrey recognized. A pretty piece. A waltz, maybe? Her niece was struggling with it.

Thomas squawked with laughter over something, and Matthew said, “Fuck you!”

LaTonya exploded: “Don't you
ever
use language like that in this house, you hear me?”

The two boys fell instantly silent. Matthew, looking like a whipped puppy, said, “Yes, ma'am.”

“That's right,” LaTonya said.

Audrey caught the younger boy's eye and gave him a mildly disapproving look that was still, she hoped, filled with auntly love.

Leon was stuffing his face meanwhile. He said, “I wish I could eat supper here every night, LaTonya.”

She beamed, then caught herself. “Is there any reason you can't get yourself a job?”

“Doing what?” Leon said, dropping his fork dramatically. “Operating an electrostatic spray gun at the Seven-Eleven, maybe?”

“Doing something,” LaTonya said.

“Doing something?” Leon said. “Like what? Like what do you think a guy with my skills can do here?”

“Your skills,” LaTonya scoffed.

“How do you think it feels getting laid off?” Leon said, his voice rising. “Do you have any idea? How do you think I feel about myself?”

“I'll tell you how I feel about you sitting around doing absolutely nothing,” LaTonya said. She cocked her head. “Camille,” she shouted, “what are you doing?”

Another muffled cry.

“We're all eating in here,” LaTonya yelled. “We're likely to finish dinner without you, rate you're practicing.”

Camille screamed back, “I can't stand it!”

“You can yell all you want,” LaTonya bellowed. “Won't make any difference. You're not getting over on me.”

“Let me talk to her,” Audrey said. She excused herself from the table, went into the next room.

Camille was weeping at the piano, her head resting on her elbows atop the keys. Audrey sat down at the bench next to her. She stroked her niece's hair, lingering on the kitchen, that kinky hair at the nape of her neck. “What is it, honey?”

“I can't stand it,” Camille said. She sat up. Her face was streaked with tears. She looked genuinely upset; it was no act. “I don't understand this. This is torture.”

Audrey looked at the sheet music. Brahms's Waltz in A Minor. “What don't you get, baby?”

Camille touched the music with a pudgy, tear-damp finger, making a tiny pucker.

“The trill, is that it?”

“I guess.”

Audrey nudged Camille over a bit and played a few measures. “Like that?”

“Yeah, but I can't do that.”

“Try this.” Audrey played the trill slowly. “Down an octave.”

Camille placed her fingers on the keyboard and tried.

“Like this,” Audrey said, playing again.

Camille imitated her. Close enough. “That's it, baby. You got it. Try it again.”

Camille played it, got it right.

“Now go back a couple of measures. To here. Let me hear it.”

Camille played the first two lines of the second page.

“Boy, are you a fast learner,” Audrey marveled. “You don't even need me anymore.”

Camille smiled faintly.

“When's your recital?”

“Next week.”

“What are you doing besides this?”

“Little Prelude.”

“Beethoven?”

Camille nodded.

“Can I come?”

Camille smiled again, this time a happy grin. “You think you have time?”

“I'll make time, baby. I'd love to. Now, hurry up and finish. I'm getting lonely at the table without you.”

 

Paul looked up as Audrey entered the dining room. He was a pigeon-chested man with sunken cheeks, a recessive gene but a sweet-natured guy. Camille was back at the Brahms, strong and enthusiastic. “I don't know what you threatened her with, but sounds like it worked,” he said.

“She probably pulled out her handcuffs,” said LaTonya.

“Probably her gun,” Leon mumbled. He seemed to have calmed down in the meantime, retreated back into his old, monosyllabic self.

“No,” Audrey said, sitting down. “She just needed a little help figuring something out.”

“I want an ice cream sundae for dessert,” the younger boy said.

“I'll be the judge of that,” said LaTonya. “Right now it's looking awful grim for you.”

“How come?”

“You got more than half your meat loaf left. Now Audrey, what are you working on these days?”

“It's not dinner-table conversation,” Audrey said.

“I don't mean the gory details.”

“I'm afraid it's all gory details,” Audrey said.

“She's working on that murder of the Stratton worker got murdered down on Hastings,” Leon said.

Audrey was amazed he even knew what she was working on. “People aren't supposed to know what I'm doing,” she told him.

“We're all family here,” said LaTonya.

“Right, but still,” said Audrey.

“No one's going to say anything, my saditty sister,” LaTonya said. “You think we know anybody? This guy fell
off the edge, that right? Get into crack and other poisons like that?” She cast an evil eye at her two sons.

“I met the guy,” Leon said.

“Who?” said Audrey. “Andrew Stadler?”

Leon nodded. “Sure. He kept to himself, but I talked to him in the break room once or twice.” Leon reached for the macaroni and cheese and shoveled a huge lump onto his plate, a third helping. “Couldn't meet a nicer guy.”

“A troubled man,” Audrey said.

“Troubled?” said Leon. “I don't know. Gentle as a lamb, I'll tell you that.”

“Really?” said Audrey.

“Gentle as a lamb,” Leon said again.

“I'm done,” Camille announced, entering the room and sitting down next to Audrey. She found Audrey's hand under the table and gave it a little secret squeeze. Audrey's heart fluttered for a moment.

“Took you long enough,” said LaTonya. “I hope you learned your lesson.”

“You sounded great,” Audrey said.