The Most Dangerous Thing (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

G
ood Friday
reminds Gwen of how deeply Catholic Baltimore still is. Although it’s not an
official holiday for businesses, many companies offer it as a flex day. And if
schools are not already on spring vacation, students are guaranteed the day off.
So she has brought Annabelle to her office, never really a good idea. The place
fascinates Annabelle—for about forty-five minutes. Then the whining begins. Gwen
has parked her in a conference room with a DVD player, a stack of Disney movies,
a stapler, and some scratch paper and asked her to “work” on the paper. Like
many children, Annabelle yearns to be useful. She quickly abandons the project,
curls up in a chair, and begins sucking her thumb as she watches princesses
cavort.

“There will be something,” another parent in Gwen’s
group told her when she entered the China adoption program. This woman was going
back for her second child, and Gwen initially appreciated her advice and
expertise. “What do you mean by something?” she asked. They had met—it seems
silly now—in a Chinese restaurant up in Towson.

“Well, in our first group, one of the girls was a
hoarder. She hoarded immense amounts of food, trash. She was older, almost two.
Another child clearly had medical problems. The question was how serious they
were. The family had to take a leap of faith to bring her home.”

“And?” Gwen could not believe how nervous she was
about the answer to her question, how invested she had become, in the space of a
sentence, in a family about which she knew nothing.

“She was fine.”

“Did your daughter—”

“Lily.”

“Yes, Lily. Did she—?”

The woman stared off into space, but that didn’t
keep her eyes from welling with tears. “There was a bonding issue. She was very
attached to my husband, but she had nothing for me for a long time. It was
hard.” She swallowed, blinked, smiled. “But it turned out great. These are such
great kids.”

Inevitably, Gwen started trolling the Internet. She
lasted about a week on a forum for prospective parents. It was too much, an
aggregation of nightmares and dreams.

In the end, she didn’t really have
something
with Annabelle, other than the expected
developmental delays. She had been warned that Annabelle would think her new
parents smelled funny and looked funny, that she would stare at the ceiling when
overwhelmed. But her daughter had an indomitable spirit. It was a strange thing
to think, but Gwen sometimes finds herself wondering how Annabelle would have
fared if she hadn’t been adopted. She believes she would have thrived. She
believes her daughter would have thrived anywhere. Though Gwen and Karl are
important to her, beloved by her, they’re not shaping her in any way. She is who
she is. All Gwen can do is stand by, rather helplessly, and love her to
pieces.

This year Annabelle will spend Easter weekend with
Karl, by his request, which surprised Gwen. Karl has never been religious and
had no desire to see Annabelle brought up in his faith, Catholicism. They have
been taking Annabelle to the little Presbyterian church in Dickeyville, a place
that Gwen attended until she announced, at age twelve, that she didn’t want to
go anymore, and her parents didn’t object. Gwen isn’t sure what Annabelle is
taking away from it, but it’s a nice ritual, going to church, then stopping by
her father’s house for Sunday lunch.

But this year, Karl’s sister has arrived from
Guatemala, and he is putting on a bit of a show for her, taking her to services
at the cathedral, making reservations for brunch at one of the downtown hotels.
Gwen will be alone. Well, with her father, but alone. She has entrusted
Annabelle’s Easter basket to Karl, with careful instructions about where to put
it this year. It kills her, not being there, but Annabelle will be out of bed by
seven, maybe even six. For a moment, Gwen was tempted to tell her there was no
Easter bunny, just so Gwen would have a reason to bring the basket the day
before. But Annabelle is only five. She deserves several more years of believing
in impossible, lovely lies.

The office, never a loud place, is still today,
with most of Gwen’s employees opting for the flex day. If she could drag her
thoughts away from Annabelle, she could get a lot of work done. But what she
really wants to do is go to the conference room and curl up with her, watch
whatever Disney princess is enchanting her. Feminist that she believes herself
to be, Gwen has no problem with little girls wanting to be princesses. Want to
find the damaged women among you? Look to the ones who had their femininity
thwarted at every turn, the poor hulking girls who were asked to play the boys’
parts at their all-girl summer camps or schools. Margery, her most aggressive,
ruthless reporter, loves bags and shoes and wouldn’t step out of the house
without makeup. It’s not an either-or world. It’s possible to be a feminine
feminist.

Becca, her assistant, pops her head around the
door, and Gwen is instantly on alert. “Annabelle OK?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s in heaven. She can’t wait until
noon, when I’ve told her we can go to the vending machines and pick two items
each, as long as one of them doesn’t have chocolate. No, you’ve got a call that
came through the main switchboard. A woman, doesn’t want to give her full name,
very cloak and dagger, but she says she’s been calling and calling your cell and
you don’t answer and she does, in fact, know the number to your cell. Clearly,
she thinks this is somewhat urgent.”

Gwen glances down, realizes her phone has been on
silent. When Annabelle is with her, there’s no reason to be vigilant about the
cell. She touches the screen and sees a series of three calls over the morning,
each from a number with the caller ID function blocked. But it’s a number she
recognizes, kind of. Local. A number she has dialed recently. She touches it,
the phone on speaker, and is amazed how quickly the call goes through, how a
voice jumps out of the line like a coiled snake.

“Jesus, about time,” says the voice, which she
recognizes as Tess Monaghan’s. “You were on the verge of missing an
opportunity.”

Gwen turns off the speaker function and picks up
the phone, which only piques Becca’s interest, but so it goes. “An
opportunity?”

A pause, a sigh. “My client is in town. And despite
the fact that I have advised him strongly not to do this, he wants to meet with
you. But the window is very small. He came here to meet with his lawyer. He has
to go back home tomorrow, so the only window is early evening.”

“He—so I’m allowed to know the gender now.”

She is teasing, but Tess Monaghan doesn’t seem to
enjoy being teased. No one does. “You’re going to know everything soon. Look,
there’s a movie theater out on Nursery Road. Meet him in the lobby there.”

“Why there?”

“He can walk there from his hotel. He’s already
turned in his rental car, so he’s kind of limited in his mobility.”

“How will I know—”

“He’ll find you. Frankly, I am hoping against hope
that he stands you up or backs out at the last minute. I don’t think there’s
anything to be gained by him talking to you—and much to lose.”

G
wen
is quite familiar with the movie theater on Nursery Road, which is barely five
miles from her house in Relay. It is never crowded for some reason, possibly
because of the larger multiplex a few more miles down the highway, which is part
of an enormous mall. She, Karl, and Annabelle have come here for virtually every
talking animal movie and Pixar film made over the last two years. It is a
ridiculous place to try to have a conversation, she thinks, especially as the
ticket takers begin to eye her skeptically. Is it so unusual for a woman to wait
in the lobby of a movie theater?

An African American man comes through the door,
sixty or so, and her stomach lurches.
This is it
.
This is the moment she will be called into account, told that the man they left
in the woods to die was someone’s father, grandfather, cousin. She will counter,
of course, share the horrible truth about what he did to Go-Go, but it doesn’t
balance out, not quite. Unless Go-Go’s death balances it out. Chicken George
died in a night. Go-Go spent years dying.

The man walks by, gets in the ticket line. She
glances at her watch. The mystery client is going to stand her up after all. She
feels relieved for some reason. He doesn’t want to see her. He has nothing to
say to her. This has nothing to do with Chicken George.

She checks her e-mail on her phone, checks her
messages. Nothing. Now she’s angry. She could have had this hour with Annabelle
at the house. They could be sitting in the kitchen, dyeing eggs, baking. She’s
getting irritated at this phantom client whose on-again, off-again decisions
have affected her. She begins playing a game of Angry Birds, feeling like a very
angry bird herself.

“Mrs. Robison?” a man’s voice inquires.

She looks up into the face of a white-haired man,
broad shouldered, quite handsome. He is wearing a turtleneck beneath a
well-tailored camel’s hair coat.

“Yes.” She doesn’t even bother to correct him, say
it’s Ms.

“I’m sorry I’m late. It’s farther than I realized,
the walk here. It looked so close on a map. And I felt I was taking my life in
my hands, walking along the shoulder. I thought there would be a sidewalk.”

“There often aren’t,” she says, feeling stupid. “I
mean—in the newer developments.” She cannot imagine what this immaculately
groomed man has to do with Go-Go. Perhaps he senses her confusion, for he
extends his hand. He is the kind of man who takes another person’s hand in both
of his, holds it, making eye contact.

“I am Andrew Burke,” he says. “Gordon Halloran knew
me as Father Andrew, but I left the church several years ago. Last fall I asked
Tess Monaghan to find him so he could do me a favor of sorts. He said he would.
Then he changed his mind, and now he’s dead. A possible suicide. I feel horrible
about that.”

Perhaps because he’s a man who seems skilled at
giving comfort, Gwen also wants to comfort him. “No one knows, for sure. If it
was a suicide.”

“But you think it is.”

She wants to tell the truth. “Sometimes you can’t
know.”

He shakes his head. “True enough. But I feel that I
inadvertently pressured him. You see—we spoke, after Tess found him. I wasn’t
supposed to call, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m afraid I frustrate her, with
my inability to follow her instructions. But I wanted to hear from him—what I
needed to hear. He ended up telling me things, things I think I should tell
someone close to him. I considered his mother, but I don’t think Doris could
bear it. When I heard about you from Tess, I realized that’s who I needed. A
friend, someone who cared enough about Go-Go to ask questions after he died.
Besides, you’re a part of the story, aren’t you?”

Gwen wants to run, dash out to her car in the
parking lot and drive back home. Drive back in time. But how far back will she
have to go? How far must she go to escape what has happened?
You’re a part of the story—
well, she is. But so is
Sean, so is Tim, and McKey. Why is she being singled out?

Because she wouldn’t leave it alone. Because she
had to go to the private detective, had to pry. Tim warned her not to do this.
But how could she know that Tim would grow up to be not only smart but wise?
When did that happen?

“Is there somewhere we can go? Somewhere
private?”

“There’s actually an airport bar outside security
in terminal A,” says Gwen, who has always wondered who drinks
outside
the security gates in an airport. Now she has
one answer. People who can afford to sit while others rush by, people who want
to be as anonymous as possible. “Let’s go there.”

“A drink would be nice,” says Father Andrew—no,
just Andrew Burke, not a priest, not anymore, which Gwen finds bizarrely
comforting. He puts a gentle hand between her shoulders. It’s as if he has had
some experience with people who need help moving toward something unpleasant and
inevitable.

Chapter Thirty-seven

A
s McKey’s flight begins to make its descent into Baltimore, she hears the passengers start the usual patter about what they can identify on the ground below. “There’s Big Lots. Is that Ritchie Highway?” “I see the Applebee’s. The one on Route 175.” The Chesapeake Bay should make it easy for people to orient themselves, yet much of what she overhears is off-kilter, people mixing up east and west. McKey finds the whole ritual strange. Who needs to orient themselves from the sky? By the time you identify where you are, you’re no longer there.

She makes the final pass through the cabin. There’s always at least one person who doesn’t put electronic equipment away after the announcement. This time, it’s a Kindle user, who maintains that the prohibition doesn’t apply to e-readers.
Yes, it does, sir.
She’s firm but not bossy.

It is almost eleven. The airport will be a ghost town, with all the newsstands and food places closed for the evening. She won’t even be able to grab McDonald’s on the way out. She’ll end up eating canned tuna and whatever she can scrounge from her own fridge. She should shop tomorrow, make it special. No. That will spook him. She’ll have beer and wine—shit, she told him she was in AA. Fuck it, she’ll tell him she realized she didn’t really have a problem. But isn’t that what everyone says? Maybe she’ll tell him the truth, that she was there to watch over Go-Go. But then he’ll ask why. As always, the less said the better.

She picked up Sean’s message in the shuttle on the way to Detroit Metro. “What are you smiling about?” one of her coworkers asked. McKey hadn’t realized she was smiling. She knew he would call her. It has taken more than thirty years, but Sean finally wants to be bad, and he has chosen her. Not Gwen,
her
. There are some women who would say that’s because Gwen is a nice girl while McKey is not, but McKey doesn’t see it that way. For one thing, she doesn’t think Gwen is all that nice. She cultivates the appearance, as many women do, but Gwen has lots of bad in her. Everyone does. Goodness isn’t natural. All other living creatures put themselves first. Only people try to pretend they’re different, that they have any goals beyond survival.

Sean probably wants a one-off, no complications. That’s what she wants, too. She thinks. She’s pretty sure. God, if he fell in love with her, imagine the headaches. He might get a divorce, which he probably can’t afford, and then there would be his kid and all that shit. McKey is not angling for
that
. Although it would be cool if he fell in love with her short-term, if he got a little crazy for a while, then sobered up and went home. A prolonged fling would be perfect.

It’s funny to McKey how men think they’re in charge, making these decisions. They never are. If a man leaves his wife, it’s because another woman has finagled him into asking for a divorce. Or he gets kicked out, which wasn’t what he wanted, even if he was having affairs and the like. Rita always engineered the end of her relationships. Shed Rick for Larry, shrugged Larry off to follow that big-talking loser down to Florida. She may not have made the best choices, but they were hers.

McKey could end it here. It’s enough that Sean has called, that he wants to see her. To
talk,
he said in his message. Right, sure, uh-huh. I bet your wife doesn’t understand you. I bet you’ve grown apart. She’s very cold. She never pays you any attention, never has a kind word for you. McKey has heard all those things over the years. Not long ago she heard them from her ex, who came sniffing around her door, and OK, she let him in one night. No one got hurt. No one ever gets hurt if people are quiet and discreet and mind their own business. It’s the talkers of the world who make trouble.

Tally Robison was a gossip, although she didn’t have any awareness of this, proclaimed to be the opposite. When Mickey sat in her kitchen, waiting for Gwen to return from school on the cute little half-bus that kids took to private school—even her bus is better, she remembers thinking—Tally talked on and on, and all her stories were about how wonderful she was and how awful everyone else was. The drab clothes worn by so-and-so, the awful casseroles the other mothers brought to the church potluck. The wonder of her taste, her style, her knowledge, her wit. She would flip through magazines, sighing.
It’s criminal to have the taste without the pocketbook.
McKey now thinks Tally overrated herself, but she was mesmerized at the time, nodding raptly over her miniature packets of Smarties and Twizzlers. Oh, the pain of being so beautiful, so bright, so stylish. How do you stand being you, Mrs. Robison?

She always thought it came down to the mothers. That’s why Sean chose Gwen. Because he bought into those fables, the special-ness of the Robisons. True, there was that dramatic rescue, the day he saved Gwen from the stream. But it was merely the climax to a story already written. He was going to choose Gwen no matter what. Mickey saw it coming a long way off, well before anyone else knew. Which was good. It gave her time to practice the art of not caring. An art that, three decades later, she has almost perfected. Being with Sean will obliterate everything else somehow.

Won’t it?

There’s the baseball field. There’s the little park. There are the lights of the runway.
Why do people need to narrate their lives? What is the point of all this talk, talk, talk? Words don’t make things more real.
Quite the opposite,
McKey thinks. The more you talk about a thing, the less real it is. That’s what she was trying to get Go-Go to understand before he died. Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP.

He finally did.