Laura Lippman (3 page)

Before you kicked him in the teeth and kicked him out, only to have him return the favor when you changed your mind
.

“Bo-erne, Texas,” she said, looking at the postmark. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s pronounced Burn-e,” Tyner corrected. “Don’t you read newspapers since you stopped working for them? It was all over the papers a few years ago. The Catholic church and the Boerne government went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a battle over zoning laws. The church claimed that separation of church and state meant it was exempt from zoning.”

“Gee, I don’t know how I ever missed a fascinating story like that,” Tess said. “You know how I love a good zoning yarn.” She still hadn’t opened the envelope. It was fun, torturing Tyner. He bossed her so about everything—work, rowing, life. If he was insistent on playing Daddy, he deserved a little teenage petulance in return.

“I guess you want to read it in private,” Tyner said, even as he held his letter opener out to her.

“No!” The harshness in her voice surprised her. She hadn’t thought about Crow for days, weeks, months. She had her share of exes, enough to field a football team if she went all the way back to junior high, and was allowed to resurrect the one dead one in the bunch. It didn’t seem a particularly scarlet past to her, not for someone who had just turned thirty. More like coral, or a faded salmon color.

“I mean, this is no big deal,” she added. “For all we know, he’s probably just writing about some CD or book he had left in my apartment.” But the only thing he had left behind was a ratty sweater the color of sauteed mushrooms. Her greyhound, Esskay, had unearthed it from beneath the bed and used it as part of her nest.

“Just open it.”

She ignored Tyner’s letter opener and unsealed the flap with her index finger, cutting herself on the cheap envelope. Her finger in her mouth, she upended the envelope. A newspaper clipping that had been glued to an index card slid out onto Tyner’s desk, and nothing more.

The clipping was a photograph, or a part of one, with a head-and-shoulders shot cut from a larger photograph, the fragment of a headline still attached over the head, like a halo.

IN BIG TROUBLE

The hair was different. Shorter, neater. The face was unmistakably Crow’s, although it looked a little different, too. Surely she was imagining that—how much could a face change in six months? There was a gauntness she didn’t remember, a sharpness to his cheekbones that made him look a little cruel. And his mouth was tight, lips pressed together as if he had never smiled in his life. Yet when she thought of Crow—which was really almost never, well maybe once a month—he was always smiling. Happy-go-lucky, blithe as a puppy. “The perfect postmodern boyfriend,” one of her friends had called him. A compliment, yet also a dig.

In the end, it was the gap in temperament, not the six-year age difference so much, that had split them up. Or so her current theory held; she had revised their history several times over the past six months. He had been so endearingly boyish. Tess had been in the market for a man. Now here was a man, frowning at her. A man In Big Trouble.

That was his problem.

“There’s no sign which newspaper it came from,” Tyner said, picking up the card and holding it to the light, trying to read the type on the side that had been glued down. “The back looks like a Midas Muffler ad, and that could be anywhere in the country. Didn’t Crow head off to Austin last spring?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“Do about what?”

“Crow, and this trouble he’s in.”

“I’m not going to do anything. He’s a big boy, too big to be playing cut-and-paste. In fact, I bet his mommy lets him use the real scissors now, instead of the little ones with the rounded-off blades.”

Tyner rolled his wheelchair a few feet and grabbed the wastebasket. “So throw it away,” he dared her. “Three-pointer.”

Tess tucked the photo and envelope into her notebook-sized datebook, the closest thing she had to a constant companion these days. “My Aunt Kitty will want to see his photo, just for old time’s sake, take in the spectacle of Crow without his purple dreadlocks. She was his friend, too, you know.”

Tyner smiled knowingly. But then Tyner always smiled knowingly at Tess. He was one smug, insufferable prick, and proud of it.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think it’s your personality that qualifies you for the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

“
Everyone
qualifies for the Americans with Disabilities Act,” he replied. “But a select few of us have to put it on our license plates. I keep trying to decide what little symbol should be riding on your bumper, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Tess left Tyner’s office, intending to head straight to the bank, then back to her office, where Esskay waited, probably snoozing through the gray October day. She reminded herself that she was a businesswoman, a grown-up, with checks to write, calls to return, and a dog to walk. She didn’t have time for little-boy-rock-star-gonnabes and their games.

As she crossed Charles Street, the open door of the Washington Monument caught her eye. Like many things in Baltimore, it needed a compound modifier to achieve true distinction: first permanent monument to the first President to be built by a city or government jurisidiction. A tiny George was plopped on top, his profile as familiar to Tess as her own. More so, really, for how often do you see your own profile? She saw George almost every day, staring moodily down Charles Street. Soon enough, he’d be dressed up with strings of lights for the Christmas season. Spring would come, and the parks around him would fill with daffodils and tulips. Summer, and he would seem to droop a bit, like all of Baltimore did in the July humidity. Fall, the current season, was Baltimore’s best, its one unqualified success. George must have a fine view from where he stood. Yet here Tess was at his feet, a Baltimore native, and she couldn’t remember ever climbing his tower and seeing the world as he saw it.

Suddenly, it seemed urgent to do so. She walked inside, stuffed a dollar into the wooden donations box, and skipping the historical plaques and displays at the base, began to make the climb, counting each step as she went.

The circular staircase was cooler than the world outside, its air thick with some recently applied disinfectant or cleanser. As Tess began sucking wind about a third of the way up—even someone who exercised as much as she did was ill-prepared to climb so many steps so quickly—she felt a little woozy from the fumes. Still, she climbed, her knapsack and long braid bouncing on her back. Up, up and up—220, 221, 222, 223—until she saw the ceiling flattening out above her head, a sign that she had come to the end, step 228.

Plexiglass shields and metal gates kept one from venturing out on the tiny parapet that circled Washington’s feet, but the view was still extraordinary. Funny, she had never realized what a squat city Baltimore was, how it hugged the ground. The effect was of a low, paranoid place, peering anxiously over one shoulder. She looked east, to where she lived and worked. Then to the north, a scarlet and gold haze of trees at this time of year. Closer in, she could pick out the roof of the Brass Elephant, her home away from home. She turned to the west, to that ruined part of the city between downtown and Ten Hills, the neighborhood where she had grown up, where her parents still lived.

She saved Washington’s view, the south, for last, then swiveled her head a hair to the right so she was actually facing southwest. Was there really some place called Texas past the Inner Harbor and its slick, shiny buildings? It seemed unfathomable. She felt like one of Columbus’s contemporaries, trying to grasp the idea the world was round, like an orange. Assuming such a comparison had ever been made. If history had taught her anything, it was to distrust the history lessons of her childhood, with their neat little aphorisms that all seemed to be about stick-to-itiveness and moral fiber.

Still, the world looked pretty flat from here. It was all too easy to imagine falling over the edge if you strayed too far.

C
row’s photo from the newspaper stayed hidden in Tess’s datebook for several days, slipped between two weeks in March. There was no significance to those dates, they just happened to be the place where his likeness remained, almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. And because everywhere that Tess went, her datebook was sure to follow, Crow was always tucked into the crook of her arm, or riding papoose-style in her knapsack.

He was there when she found a man wanted for a paternity test in Baltimore. (She found him in paternity court in another county, giving a blood sample there. Everyone had his ruts and routines, it seemed, habits he just couldn’t break.) He rested in her knapsack as she took photos of an intersection that figured in a complicated insurance claim. Crow went to her office, bounced on the backseat of her car, spent the nights on the old mission table where they had once eaten dinner together. Tess would wake in the mornings with a vague sense of anxiety and go to bed the same way, trying to isolate the thing that was bothering her. Then she would remember, and become angry all over again. It was unfair of him to try and manipulate her, to trick her into calling when he had left her.
In Big Trouble
. And so it went, around and around in her head, until Friday came and it was Girls Night Out.

The only “out” in Girls’ Night Out was take-out. After all, Laylah was far from restaurant-ready and Kitty proved so distracting to waiters and bus boys. They hovered close, their service so constant that it was impossible to maintain a conversation. This, in turn, infuriated Laylah’s mother, Jackie—not because her own drop-dead gorgeous looks were slighted, but because she liked to speak without others eavesdropping. So the girls stayed in, with Tess bringing pizza from Al Pacino’s and Kitty relying on Chinese or Japanese carryout. Jackie was the experimental one, arriving with Styrofoam boxes from whatever Baltimore restaurant struck her fancy. Tonight it was Charleston’s, which had meant cornbread, she-crab soup, oysters fried in cornmeal, a rare steak for fish-averse Tess, and pureed vegetables for Laylah. At least everyone could share the dessert, a pecan pie that Kitty was now slicing.

Tess watched the knife sinking into the sweet pie and suddenly thought of Crow. The connection was probably worth analyzing—was it the nuts that reminded her of Crow, or was she still on that pie-sex jag? She could think about that later. Or, better yet, not think about it ever again.

“I forgot to show you this,” she said to Kitty, pulling the clip from her datebook.

“Crow! One of the best employees I’ve ever had here at Women and Children First,” Kitty said, focusing on Crow and ignoring the headline. “For one thing, he actually liked to read, which seems to be less valued among bookstore clerks than the ability to make espresso. The haircut works. Don’t you think he looks handsome, Tesser, now that he’s gotten his face?”

“I suppose so,” she said, leaning over her aunt’s shoulder, which smelled of apricots. Kitty’s scent was always changing, and her fragrances were often sweet, overbearing things that would have been cloying on another woman, yet they always worked on her. Tess wondered if that was the secret to her eternal appeal. Although in her forties Kitty had her pick of men barely half her age. With her red hair and perfect skin, she reminded Tess of a line from John Irving. Something about a woman who not only had taken care of herself, but looked as if she had good reason to do so.

“‘In Big Trouble.’ Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“Not really. It’s some cut-and-paste job. He probably did it with a computer.”

“Then how did he get it on newsprint with a muffler ad on the back?” Kitty asked, holding it to the light, just as Tyner had.

“I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“She’s lying. I can always tell when she’s lying,” Jackie said from the kitchen floor, where she was crawling after Laylah, who was in dogged pursuit of Esskay around the big oak table. The baby squealed and grabbed her mid-section, as if to mount her for a quick race. Esskay galloped away, rolling her brown eyes at Tess.
What have I done to deserve this
?

“What does the dog say?” Jackie prompted. “What does the doggie say?”

“Mooooooo,” Laylah replied, all dimples and eyes as she grabbed for Esskay’s collar. Tess was sure that Laylah knew what the doggie said, but she was already carving out her own identity, preparing her perfect mother for life with someone determined not to be so careful and circumscribed.

“I get confused about your recent romantic history,” Jackie drawled. It was as if she had caught Tess taking Laylah’s side in her mind. “Is Crow the one who came after the one who was hit by the car but before the one who’s now in prison?”

“Crow was a dream, the sort of good guy that women always claim they want,” Kitty answered for her. “If Tess hadn’t been so preoccupied with Jonathan, she might have seen that. But deep down, she was too busy mooning over him to see what a gem Crow was.”

Mourning, not mooning
. “How’s life on Shakespeare Street?” Tess asked, hoping to change the subject. “I mean, other than the free babysitting that you get by living a half-block from here, how do you like city life after the ’burbs?”

“Lot of folks keep asking me if I’m lost,” Jackie said, pulling Laylah into her lap. “What they mean is, they
wish
I was lost.”

“Fells Point is still pretty white,” Kitty said sympathetically. “But it could be worse. I heard a black woman over in Canton had her mailbox blown up the week she moved in.”

Jackie tried to wipe Laylah’s face clean. Since arriving less than an hour ago, the baby had managed to shuck the pink shoes that matched her jumper and lose one sock. She was a mess, she was gorgeous, her face so full of joy that it was contagious. It made Tess smile just to see her.

“At least my Lexus is the right color,” Jackie muttered, but her features softened when Laylah patted her cheeks with baby hands, as if imitating her mother’s futile motions with the washcloth.

“Who wants whipped cream on their pie?” Kitty asked. At last, something everyone could agree on.

“So what do you think?” Kitty asked Jackie as soon as Tess’s mouth was full. “Is Tess really interested in Crow, and pretending not to be? Or do you think she’s in love with him, and being stubborn out of some misplaced pride?”

“I don’t know if she was ever in love with him. I wasn’t around then. But she’s definitely not
finished
with him, you know what I mean? Sometimes a man is like, well, like this piece of pie when you’re supposed to be on a diet. You stick your fork in it, you break it up, you move it around on your plate, you put all this work into
not
eating it. You’re still obsessed with it.”

“Really?” Kitty was so taken by this analogy that she stopped in midbite. “I’ve never felt that way about a man. Or a pie, for that matter.”

“Well, Aunt Kitty, you’ve never left so much as a crumb behind.” Tess had tired of being discussed in the third person. “Although it’s been what—almost an entire month since you’ve ‘dated’ anyone?”

Kitty shrugged. “Just not interested, I guess. As long as we’re using food analogies, you could say I’ve got a bad case of Jordan almonds.”

“Huh?”

“I used to love Jordan almonds,” she said matter-of-factly, as if Tess should know this. “I ate them every day. Then one day, I never wanted another one.”

“Are you saying you never want to be with another man, or that you’ve finally gotten tired of the himbo parade that’s been marching through your life?”

Kitty held out her plate to Esskay and let the dog lap up the traces of whipped cream. When she spoke again, her voice was slow and careful, as if she were making a confession.

“A new UPS man took over the route today. He came in with a shipment of books, wearing his shorts, although it’s a bit late in the season for that. He had the nicest legs. You know how I like men’s calves. Single, he made a point of letting me know, and very keen to see the Fritz Lang double bill at the Orpheum. I was two sentences away from having a date with him, if I wanted one. But I didn’t, and I don’t know why.”

“I swore off men, even before I had Laylah to worry about,” Jackie said. “When I was trying to build my business, I felt as if I were a battery and they drained all the energy out of me. Now I’m a single mother and all the energy
is
drained out of me. Even with help—and all the support I’m getting from you guys—I’m exhausted most of the time. What would I do with a man, even if I could find one? And what would a man do with me? Watch me fall asleep in front of the television at nine o’clock?”

Tess said nothing. Her recent abstinence from men—from love, from passion, from all entanglements, however wrongheaded—had felt like a twelve-step program. One day at a time, and she was always aware in her mind of just how many days that had been. She liked men. They used to like her.

“I don’t seem to meet guys anymore,” she said. “Is that because I turned thirty?”

“You’re healthier,” Kitty said. “Mentally, I mean. You don’t give off that damaged vibe you used to have. There’s a large class of men with a homing instinct for women who are vulnerable, and that’s why there was always someone lurking, ready to take advantage of you.”

“You’re not damaged, and you’ve always had your pick of men,” Tess pointed out.

“I’m at the other end of the spectrum—true indifference. They start off thinking I’m the perfect woman because I want them only for their bodies, then end up saying I’m heartless. If you only knew how many men had accused me of objectifying them, or using them for sex.”

Kitty laughed, pleased with herself for being such a cadette. Laylah clapped her baby hands and laughed with her, while Jackie just shook her head and snorted: “White girl craziness.”

It was one of Jackie’s favorite expressions, but Tess thought it didn’t apply here. Different pathologies for black and white women, but pathologies all the same. Valuing the men who didn’t value you. Settling for vicarious power, instead of grabbing your own chunk of it. Worrying about the size of your butt. She had a sudden yearning to sweep Laylah up in her arms and tell her that they’d have it all worked out by the time she was a grown-up.

Jackie picked up the clipping that Kitty had left on the table. “He is kind of cute. I hope you’re going to call him, make sure he’s okay.”

“I am
not
. Let him call me if he wants to talk. My home number hasn’t changed, even if it’s unlisted now.”

“You know for a fact he sent this?” Jackie had switched to her professional persona, the steely-eyed Grand Inquisitor who had built her fund-raising business into such a hot property that clients ended up auditioning for her.

“Well, no, but he’s the only person I know in Texas.”

“The only person you
know
you know in Texas. Besides, what if he really is in a bind? I know you, girl, you’ll never forgive yourself if something happens to that boy.”

Kitty nudged the portable phone toward Tess with her elbow. Tess ignored it, pouring herself another glass of wine. “If I were to call—
if
—do you think I would do it here, within your hearing?”

Jackie and Kitty smiled smugly at each other, while Laylah made another pass at Esskay, squealing in delight when the dog ran away and slunk under the table, whimpering piteously.

“What does the doggie say, Laylah?” Jackie asked automatically.

“Meow,” Laylah said. “Meeeee-ow.”

Not even an hour later, Tess sat on her bed in the third-floor apartment above the store, Esskay nestled beside her, yet another glass of wine on her bedside table. Almost eleven o’clock. An hour earlier in Texas, and a Friday night. He’d be out, of course, performing with his band, lots of Texas girls staring at him hungrily. Texas women were reputed to be better-looking than women from elsewhere. She imagined a super-gender with hard bodies, harder hair, tanning-bed tans, and those taut neck cords that come from years of expert bulimia. Barfing sorority girls with credit cards, convertibles, and eager, grasping mouths. Girls who kept a man out late, assuming he got home at all.

So if she called now, she’d get his machine. A machine would be a nice compromise, actually. Ideal, even, the equivalent of a drive-by shooting in the gender wars.
Tag, you’re it
.

“What city?” asked the mechanical voice attached to the 512 area code.

“Austin,” she said into the alloted portion of silence.

“What listing?”

“Cr—Edgar Ransome.” She had to grope for his real name. Crow had always been Crow to her.

The voice provided ten digits and she punched them in from memory, only to hear another mechanical voice: “I’m sorry the number you have called is not in service…”

She stared at the phone, puzzled. The phone must have been cut off pretty recently if he was still listed. Oh well, Crow wouldn’t be the first musician to miss too many phone bills. Although his doting parents, the ones who had been so tolerant of his six-year plan at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, had always been good-natured about subsidizing him.

And if he were really in trouble, he’d go to them. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? An only child like her, Crow had been brought up in a much more stereotypically worshipful home. In fact, his ego was so intact, his self-esteem so genuine, that it was as if it had been baked in his mother’s kiln and coated with layers of shiny glaze. At least, she thought his mother had a kiln. She hadn’t really paid close attention when he spoke of his parents, but she remembered something about his mother’s ceramics, his father’s economics classes, which had sounded vaguely Marxist to her. A pair of gentle, retrograde hippies, raising their son simply to be.

She flipped open her datebook. It still surprised her to see how busy her life had become. The fall was full of meetings and appointments. It wasn’t just work and workouts, either, but dinners with old and new friends, even “dates” with her mom. It had been nice, being sought-after, but suddenly all those names and numbers and addresses just made her weary.