Ghost Country (20 page)

Harriet’s voice sounded like water one degree above the freezing point. She didn’t know that, didn’t know that her polished surfaces were cold, like jade, to the touch; she only knew that in her empty state she couldn’t summon the energy to respond to a stranger.

At the other end of the line poor frozen Hector could barely curve his tongue to shape vowels, but he managed to stammer that he was concerned about Ms. Stonds, that is, Ms. Mara Stonds, but also—he had learned she’d been arrested last night, in company with a psychotic homeless woman he was trying to treat; he hoped Ms. Stonds might know where the woman had been taken.

“Oh.” Harriet’s voice dropped into the low Kelvin range. “You’re the doctor who’s been handing out legal advice to street people. I remember now: my grandfather, Dr. Stonds, has spoken of you.”

Hector, hunched over the phone at Melissa’s desk, started to feel seasick again, as he had in Stonds’s of Fice earlier that day. That made him angry: he was damned if he was going to let another Stonds reduce him to drivel.

“Ms. Stonds, I have not given any legal advice to anyone. I don’t know anything about the law, but did we get rid of the idea that people are innocent until they’re proved guilty? I did not encourage your sister to stage a sit-in with Madeleine Carter,
in
fact, I saw your sister for the first time this afternoon, and we exchanged about a dozen words, all relating to her desire to schedule an appointment with me.”

“That wall where your psychotic homeless woman sits belongs to one of my clients,” Harriet said, surprising herself by offering him an explanation. “I am a lawyer. The garage manager—oh, what difference does it make, anyway, who said what to whom? I bailed my sister out early this morning. Your patient and the other
woman, the singer, no one was there to speak for them. They’re being held at County Jail for a few days. The state wants to admit your patient to County Hospital.”

“I see. So I should call over to the jail?” Hector said, wondering where it was.

“Do you know anything about how to get information out of the courts? You need the woman’s case number. Call my secretary: she should still be at her desk. She’ll get it for you. My sister has run away from home. I don’t know where she is. I’m a bit concerned about her.”

Her voice hadn’t changed in color or warmth. Hector couldn’t know she had violated her own standards of privacy and confidentiality in what she’d said. He thanked her for her advice in a voice as aloof and formal as he could manage and hung up.

At the other end Harriet felt bereft and then angry. She’d reached out to him, told him her private business, smoothed his path with the courts. For no reason at all, except that his hesitant soft voice sounded vulnerable—and he hung up on her. She started to weep, which made her angrier, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

A key turned in the door. She retreated to the shadows at the end of the room. Grandfather hated all displays of emotion, except, of course, his own. She waited for his tread to echo down the hall, the door to his room to shut while he changed clothes, and slipped into her own suite to clean her face. When she came out to greet him she looked calm as usual.

“Home early, my dear?” He kissed her cheek and looked at her old clothes. “You planning to go out with some of your friends?”

In deference to his formal attitude she usually wore a dress to dinner. “No, darling. I’m just tired, after this morning’s
contretemps
, and wanted to be comfortable.”

“Hmm. Well, you look a good deal better in your jeans than your sister, but it does seem odd. You’re coming with me to pick up Hilda in the morning, right? I know that will make her feel strong enough to return here. This afternoon she suggested moving
into a retirement community, to avoid friction with Mara, but I told her not to be ridiculous. This has been her home for—my God, has the time gone?—fifty-five years.”

“Mara thinks you want to hospitalize her,” Harriet said.

“Best solution,” he grunted. “She’s very disturbed. Wouldn’t last a day if we put her in her own apartment, won’t go to school, needs help that she refuses to get. She tried to turn to that prize loser Tammuz. I stopped that nonsense in a hurry, you can believe.”

Harriet, who had planned to tell Grandfather about Hector’s phone call, found herself responding only with a neutral “oh,” adding the news that Mara seemed to have run away.

“Oh, damn her, anyway!” Grandfather snapped, not questioning how Harriet knew. “Now we’ll be faced with some other dramatic crisis, just when Hilda is in the middle of her recovery. Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. I thought I’d phone Cynthia Lowrie after dinner to see if she knows.” Harriet played with a tassel on the lamp next to her, not sure how to ask a question about her mother. “You know,
Grand-pere
, Mara is terrified that she’s like Beatrix. Did you ever hospitalize her?”

“Scared about turning out like her mother? She damned well should be. The only thing we’ve been spared so far is a reprise of Beatrix’s indiscriminate sexual proclivities. No doubt they will appear next.”

“You never tried getting Beatrix medical help?”

Grandfather’s frown turned his face into a terrifying mask. “Don’t tell me you’re going to start second-guessing my judgment now, too. I thought you at least knew that we were well rid of her.”

Of course she was well rid of Beatrix. She knew that catechism by heart, because Grandfather or Mephers said it at least once a week all the time she was growing up, congratulating themselves on their good deed in saving Harriet. For the first
time, though, she wondered if she was well off with Grandfather. Better off than with Beatrix, certainly, she wouldn’t disagree, but couldn’t she have had a little warmth along with the French lessons, the vacations in Europe, and the quiet good taste on Graham Street?

I
T HAD ALL
seemed so clear to Becca when she left the house. Her mother, hearing the side door, had come outside and asked where she was going. To Northbrook Court with Kim and Mimi, Becca said. Karen frowned with sleep-heavy eyes. She didn’t believe her daughter, but was too tired to start another battle. Be home in time for supper, was all she said, besides the usual, who’s driving (Kim’s mom, Becca said quickly) and don’t charge more than twenty-five dollars, you’ve maxed out your credit for the month.

Karen was afraid her daughter was going off to pour her woes on her boyfriend Corie’s chest. She was afraid that Becca’s anger and confusion over her aunt could quickly turn into a more resolvable passion, and she didn’t want her daughter to have sex so young. If she’d known that Becca, picking up her bike, was riding neither to Corie’s nor Kim’s, but to the train station, that she was on the 11:49 to Chicago—well, how could it have made her more worried than the idea of inexpert teen gropings, no condoms, no pill, nothing between Becca and a baby but the laws of chance?

After her outburst at her mother’s cruelty in not wanting to bail Luisa out of jail and bring her home, Becca had returned to her
own room. She planned to keep vigil until her father’s return, but fell immediately asleep, waking only when Harry’s Mercedes crunched on the gravel below her window at nine-thirty. She ran downstairs to eavesdrop outside the breakfast room.

“Dr. Stonds was at the station, too,” Daddy was saying. “You probably don’t remember, but he operated on Mother’s brain tumor.”

Mom’s voice, a murmur telling Daddy that Becca was sleeping. Daddy’s rasping voice dropping to a husky whisper. Stonds’s granddaughter … crazy homeless woman … (then, exasperated, more loudly) oh, who in hell knows what Janice thought she was doing? Yes, she was drunk. No, I left her in jail. You don’t need bail, disturbing the peace they let you out on your own word, but they’re holding her a few days until she dries out … hospitalization … fed up …

Becca crept back upstairs. Aunt Luisa in jail. His own sister. If she had a sister … No, she’d have a brother, he’d be in line to inherit Minsky Scrap Iron, to be crowned the new King of Scrap, as Aunt Luisa liked to call Daddy. There was nothing wrong with owning a scrap business, it was good for the planet, recycling other people’s rusty junk that they didn’t care enough to look after. When she first met Corie she almost beat him up for making fun of Daddy’s work. The kids in her school, their fathers were lawyers or doctors, they didn’t understand the value of meeting a payroll, but there was only Becca, and Daddy didn’t think he was being prejudiced, but, sweetheart, I just can’t see a girl in that rough neighborhood, It’s hard enough on me. Your grandfather never needed to use a gun, and I’ve had to take up marksmanship, not a job for a nice Jewish boy, let alone a girl.

Becca was going to be a veterinarian. Besides her dog Dusty she looked after a trio of hamsters, a tank of goldfish, and two cats, Once, when Dusty cut his paw on a broken bottle that some jerk dropped in the park, Becca held him while Dr. Kalnikov stitched him up. Dr. Kalnikov said she had a natural rapport with animals.

If she had a brother, she wouldn’t leave him in jail, especially if
he was a sensitive artist, used to pampering. Mom was right, Becca hated Aunt Luisa showing up drunk, but Luisa needed looking after. Prostitutes with knives, she’d seen that on TV, women’s prison was no joke. What if someone cut Luisa in the throat and she was never able to sing again? Because of the Holocaust it was very important always to support human rights and civil rights; Harry and Karen gave a lot of money to groups like the ACLU and the First Freedoms Forum, but what about Luisa’s civil rights?

It was at that point that Becca decided to take the train to Chicago. She looked up the First Freedoms Forum address and set out. By the time she reached the city her confidence began to wane. She had been to Chicago, of course, many times—to shows with her parents, down to the South Side to visit the scrap yard—but she’d never come alone. When she was with Karen the crowds seemed exciting, but buffeted now in the cross-tides of commuters she felt frightened. She had never noticed how dirty the station was, either, with its unwashed floors, Utter dropped everywhere. The vaulted ceiling was miles away. Some tired designer had stuck particleboard cubicles into the enormous space to house fast-food restaurants. They looked like the toys of an unkempt giant, dropped randomly between the benches and ticket counters.

Becca thought about turning tail and running home, but Aunt Luisa was still in jail. She had to show there was one Minsky with compassion. She gritted her teeth and asked a cop how to find LaSalle Street.

Her courage ebbed still further as she waited in a cramped antechamber for someone to be willing to talk to her. When a young man in khaki pants and a rumpled white shirt finally came out, he did nothing to set her at ease. He stood over her with his arms crossed, looking at his watch, his files, anything but her, until she could barely get out any words.

Before she finished he told her she should be at a legal aid clinic if she couldn’t afford a lawyer. Triple-F only took cases with some constitutional significance. Like what? Oh, free speech, illegal search and seizure, that kind of thing.

“Well, my aunt’s free speech rights were violated,” Becca said wildly, picturing Luisa singing one of her arias in public, and being told to shut up.

The young man gave an exaggerated sigh, and said that Luisa’s behavior constituted a public nuisance, not protected speech. Becca by this time was close to tears.

Another attorney, a woman about her mother’s age, stopped to listen to them. “Just call over to the station for her, Stefan. Or I’ll do it if you’re busy…. Luisa Montcrief ? The diva? Are you sure she was arrested, honey?”

“Yes, she’s my aunt.” And to her own embarrassment Becca started to sob.

Stefan scuttled away as from an open sewer, which made the woman smile. “They sure don’t like any PDEs, do they? Oh—displays of emotion. Public or private depending on the circumstance. Stay here and I’ll make a couple of calls for you.”

She handed Becca a box of tissues and disappeared into the inner offices, where she was gone for some time. Becca excused herself shyly to the receptionist and was directed to a ladies’ room. She washed her face and carefully outlined her mouth again in the black lipstick Karen hated.

When Becca returned to the reception area, the woman was waiting for her. She had a man with her, an older one, who looked more like Becca’s idea of a lawyer than the young man: his hair was gray, he wore a suit, and he had a serious face with intense eyes. In fact, he looked at Becca so seriously that she thought at first he might be going to chew her out for wasting their time.

The woman introduced him: Maurice Pekiel, a senior attorney, free speech expert. She herself was called Judith Ohana. Judith had persuaded the state’s attorney to release Madame Montcrief, but, looking Becca in the eyes, your aunt is quite ill; to be blunt she’s suffering delirium as the result of alcohol withdrawal. It would be quite unpleasant for Becca to see her now. In fact, the state’s attorney had released Madame Montcrief to a bed at County Hospital until they could calm down her seizures. After that, well, it would
be up to Becca and her family to decide whether they felt like bringing her home.

Becca flushed with misery … for her impulsiveness in riding downtown; for exposing herself, her family, to public scrutiny; for taking Judith Ohana’s time on a problem which now looked tawdry, not urgent; for being fourteen and not knowing what she thought or felt about anything in the world around her. She got up to leave, trying to mumble a thank-you so they wouldn’t think she cared about their opinion.

“But you’ve brought a pretty little problem to our attention,” Judith said. “Mr. Pekiel wants to look into it. The woman who was arrested with your aunt was having a religious vision at that hotel garage. We might want to support her. It could be that her religious liberty takes precedence over issues of public disturbance—well, not to bother you with technical language—but it could be she has a right to be down there, if that’s the only place she can practice her religion. So we wanted to thank you for letting us know about such an interesting situation. And can you give us your phone number? It’s always possible we might need to get in touch with you.”