Park Lane South, Queens (26 page)

CHAPTER 12

Mary sat in her chair and looked down at the floor. That was the next thing. A really good scrubbing for that linoleum. Not today, though. And she wasn't going to ask one of the kids. If they couldn't think of it on their own, they could live with it the way it was. That was one thing she just wouldn't do. She remembered her own mother sitting at the same table, probably the very same chair, saying nothing, looking out the window while her husband ranted and raved at the kids. His fine Irish tongue run to drivel with drink and the florid injustices that went with it. He would aim it at the children, at her brothers and sisters and herself. Sure, weren't they the only ones who didn't know better than to take it? Do this, Mary. Go on off, now and do that, Mary. Isn't that tea up yet, girl? Oh, she could still hear him as clear as a bell. Well she wasn't going to have her children remembering their parents for that sort of nilly. Row upon row of upright tulips in the garden, all straight in rows, and never a child allowed near enough to God forbid enjoy them. No. Mary took a noisy, bitter slurp of her coffee. It might be noisy, chaotic memories her kids would have, but they would be gentle and permissive. Yes, that would always be the better way. She'd decided that as a young girl and she wouldn't change that.

Stan came in and sat down. “You wanna sit here all day or you wanna come with me?”

“I was just thinking … remembering. How rigid my own dad was. How we never really knew him. We were afraid of him if anything. ‘Dad's comin'!' we used to hiss at each other. Like, the monster's comin' … or something. You'd think he would have wanted us to love him, wouldn't you?”

“'Cause if you want to stay here, I can go drop off the Lotto and come back and get you.”

“A man as intelligent as he was … you'd think he would have known better. Phh. Artist! Artist in false pride is what he was. With seven children and too good to take honest labor of any kind! And my own poor mother swallowin' the bile and goin', with her head held high, mind, to his own mother just to get money to pay the bloody milkman … it was … it was disgustin'!”

“Mary. Come with me now and stop sittin here thinking. The next'll be the memories of snow and your mother and when she died and before you can say Jack Robinson you'll be wanting me to take you over to the cemetery and on the way stop off at the florist.”

“It's Claire I've been thinking about, really. When she was small there wasn't any of this soul-searching stuff. She was a normal, happy little girl, wasn't she? A real Ann of Green Gables. She wasn't the one you would think would get mixed up in all this mumbo jumbo. And it wasn't Michael's death that got her started, either. No, it was something else. Like when she started hanging around down in Greenwich Village after school. Rolling up her uniform above her knees and hitching to the city to go listen to drop-out musicians. That was when she started with all this metaphysical bunk. Remember the palmistry? All those books out of the library! The Manhattan library, too. And now them coming looking for her pictures in the cellar. I knew that darkroom was a bad idea.”

“Now what's one thing got to do with the other?”

“Maybe I should have been more stern. I shouldn't have been so trusting.”

“You wanted me to remind you about the meat.”

“Oh, yikes, that's right! I've got that top round I have to get out of the freezer. You do that for me, will you, dear? And I'll put some lipstick on. The garage freezer.”

“Mary?”

“What?”

“What's Claire going to do about that camera Johnny Benedetto gave her?”

“Stanley Breslinsky. That's her own decision now, isn't it? And I won't have you influencing her, one way or the other.” Mary rubbed the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and grinned into her grubby compact.

Stan shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He could just make out the tops of her garters under her skirt. It was the big soft cotton skirt with the pineapples on it.

“And,” she dotted each cheek with a smudge from her lipstick and savagely patted, “you'd better start thinkin' about what you're going to do about the old camera … whether you'll be givin' it to Claire or not.”

“That again.”

“Yes, that again. What're you savin' it for? To leave her after you're dead and gone?”

“To be sure. She won't be getting much else.”

“Stop jokin' around, Stan. Now, I mean it.” There was a quarter of a cup left of her coffee and she finished it off with a healthy last draft. “She could use it now. She couldn't be in more of a crisis. She'll wind up takin' this fellow's camera just to get back in the race.”

“He's the best man any of them's brought home yet.”

“I know. But you don't know, really. You never can tell. Wasn't it you urging Zinnie to marry Fred? It was. I know Claire has ethics. Too many, maybe. But if life forces her hand, there's no tellin' what could happen. She might go with him just to justify accepting the gift, like.”

“She'd be right to do it.”

“That's just the point, Stan. It's not to be your decision. It's hers. And if she has her own camera she won't need anything from him. She'll be free to judge him for love's sake.”

Stan looked at his nails stubbornly. “If I pushed Zinnie at all, it didn't turn out so badly. You got Michaelaen didn't you?”

“Got Michaelaen! Like he was some raffle prize and me with the right ticket! Sure I'd give him up in a flash if he could have a normal life with a mom and a dad just like every other child, I would! You're hot stuff, you are. Well, maybe not. Not in a flash. Oh, will you give the dog some of your bread and butter?”

“I'm not eating any.”

“Well, you're standing right alongside of it! Just give it to him, will you? He's driving me crazy.”

“He shouldn't have butter.”

“Neither should you.”

“Especially not in this heat. I ought to bring him along to the vet's one of these days. He's long due. You like that, wouldn't you, boy? A nice trip to the fine doctor?”

Like fish, thought the Mayor.

Mary stood up decisively and smoothed her skirt. “So when are you going to give Claire that old camera of yours? I mean, if you want to.”

Stan was spreading butter back and forth, back and forth. It couldn't get any softer. The Mayor sat patiently down on the cool linoleum.

“Michaelaen still upstairs?” Mary, her germ planted, changed the subject.

“He's shaving. I gave him a shaver with no razor and he's up there scraping shaving foam off his face.”

They both were quiet then. They could hear the rabbits outside shuffling in their cages. Stan lit up his pipe.

“I know you're thinking hard,” said Mary. “If you don't stop puffing you'll disappear. And you know it's not the smoker who necessarily gets the emphysema. It's the one sitting across the table.”

Stan, momentarily invisible inside his cloud of smoke, was dreaming of his latest project, a miniature carousel. Not quite the work of art up in the park, perhaps. Let's face it, he was no brilliant woodcarver like Muller, who created the original merry-go-round, but he did have his own small flair for things. He could have it finished for Christmas if he hurried. He looked over at his wife. Whenever Mary looked this pretty, Stan worried, it usually meant that her blood pressure was up. “I'll go on and get that meat,” he said.

Mary and the Mayor watched him with equal expressions of irritation. First he had to choose his tape and attach his earphones. To someone as nimble and quick as Mary, this could take an inordinate amount of time. This morning she chose not to notice. She raised her eyebrows and kept them raised and turned her back. Chopin. Chopin meant the rain would go on and on. Tch. She'd have to go back upstairs and change her shoes. The Mayor sadly noted the first high strains of Chopin as a continuation to his long-standing bout with arthritis. It never failed. He was really starting to take a dislike to this particular composer. This weather took the starch right out of you. Then again, it was always better to know in advance, wasn't it? You didn't want to find yourself too far from home when it started to rain. One thing he could never figure out, though, was whether Stan played Chopin because it was going to rain or if it rained because Stan played Chopin.

Claire slept late. As long as it rained she was deep in the eyes of blue Morpheus, and the minute it stopped so did she. One eye was crumpled shut, the other telescoped the dim attic, not yet sure just where she was. It rested on the note propped on her dresser, bold and yellow, scrawled in Carmela's dynamic script. “Here's the address,” it read, “you can pick it up after eleven.”

Right. The car. Oh, hell. It felt pretty late. There went all hope of a ride. Where was this garage, anyway? She got out of bed and scrutinized the note. Kew Gardens. Up on Queens Boulevard. That would be the Q37 bus. She looked in the mirror. Why did the corners of her mouth hang down like that? Final, inevitable gravity, that was why. So this was it, eh? Or had the alcohol done it? The lot had done it. She might as well accept it. No mirror round the world had ever treated her so bluntly. All right, fine, she'd jog up there. There was no shame in aging. Or she'd walk. Yes, walking would be far more sensible. She could just see herself having a heart attack if she overdid it. An aspirin wasn't a bad idea, either. Her face would go on her just when she needed it. Just when she was falling in—oh, rubbish! She wasn't falling in anything. More likely she just wished she was in love to justify accepting the camera. Well, she wasn't going to let her panic go turning her into a prostitute, for God's sake. If she had been going to prostitute herself she could have done it long ago and over a lot more than a frigging camera. She blew her nose. She had to do something about her hair. She twirled one strand around her finger and held it up to the milky light. Old Iris still remembered her as a redhead. At least someone did. But really, if you held it a certain way it did still have sort of a glint. Sort of. Hmm. Maybe a rinse? Tch. American television! It made you want to be glamorous. She must stop watching it.

The geranium on the sill caught her interest. She loved them like this, with no real flowers to speak of but the blossoms ready to open. The color was wonderful then, very rich and true. All of it yet to come. Of course, it was possible that Iris hadn't been referring to her own hair at all … couldn't she have meant someone else? Someone else watching the house? A redheaded murderer? Why not? Claire regarded herself in the mirror and lit a cigarette. Christ. That fellow over at Holy Child, the one who'd been outside when they'd brought out the white casket, he'd had red hair. Even Freddy's lover, that bartender, was a redhead. What would he be doing snooping around here? Jealous of Zinnie? Good Lord. And that kid in front of the church, couldn't he have been the one to go after her cameras? Wouldn't he have reason to think she'd taken his picture? He'd certainly walked right into her frame. Only he had no way of knowing that she hadn't taken any shots. That would explain why he couldn't find the picture of himself … because there'd never been one. Oh, she should call someone. She must do that right away. Really, it was astonishing that they'd left her all alone here! If this were a film, the murderer would be under the porch already. Or in the closet. He might very well be in the closet. Or she. Claire felt the droplets of sweat breaking out on her scalp. Perhaps she really was over the deep end, as Johnny had suggested. Maybe she was the murderer herself? A true schizophrenic. Like
The Three Faces of Eve
! She sucked in her breath. She must be mad. What she needed was an English muffin. Cautiously, she left the room. There, on the landing, stretched puppy style with arms and legs flat out alongside himself, the Mayor stuck out his pink tongue in glad tidings. He had only just come out here in hopes of a draft.

“Well, hello there, cookie,” her breathing relaxed. “Good to see you.”

Down the stairs they shuffled, as close as they could get without tripping over each other. “On the other hand,” Claire continued her train of thought out loud, “just because he had red hair doesn't make him a murderer. And just because he happened to be at church that time could have been mere coincidence.” The redhead Iris referred to could have been an old woman's poor vision. Or suspicion thrown on someone else on purpose. Really, it was a nightmare. Halfway down, the doorbell chimed. “Now who,” demanded Claire, “Is that?”

The Mayor bellowed roundly and tripped his reassuring, if no longer graceful, mazurka. The six alerted spiders on the mildewed walls adjusted their positions, and there was, just as she'd feared, nobody at the door.

Electrified, she stood stock still. There was no sound besides the Mayor's wheezing pant. The back door! She had to get to it before whoever was out there did. With breakneck speed she hurled herself across the hallway, through the kitchen, grabbing a knife from the gourmet countertop block of six along the way and onto the door she flew. It was locked. She stood there, her spine pressed against the wood, her kitchen knife one calla lily in her whitened hand. The Mayor watched with patent leather eyes. She was having, he presumed, what was known as a nervous breakdown.

“Hullo!” came a voice from the driveway through the creepers. “Anybody home?”

It was Mrs. Dixon.

“Hi,” Claire answered back as cheerfully as she could.

“You all right in there?”

“Yes! Yes, fine. Just having breakfast.” Even in her dither she knew enough not to add a “care to join me.” The woman, once in, would never leave. She didn't mind feeling silly as much as she minded being bored out of her mind.

“Your mom asked me to look in on you,” Mrs. Dixon explained. “They've got their bowling meet today, you know. The big one.”