Little Deaths(18)

Coming in that night, he threw his jacket over the back of the chair and loosened his tie, turned on the lamp, rinsed a mug, and filled it with cold water. Drank deep, wrinkling his nose at the faint taste of coffee. He wanted to like coffee because it was what the other guys at the paper drank. It was what everyone drank.

He sat on the bed and finally the day was over. He untied his shoes and removed his pants and socks and shirt and folded them over the chair and lay down wondering if there was anything in the refrigerator for the morning. If he would call the girl with the green eyes he’d met in a bar off Union Square. How he was going to begin writing up the Malone case. And that got him thinking of her and there he stopped, his mind coming to rest on the image of her slim figure. Her raised hand. Her open mouth.

He thought again of the photograph and of her watchful eyes. He wondered what color they were up close. How her voice sounded.

And he wondered if he would dream of her, but then he didn’t remember his dreams at all.


The next morning, Frank arrived and suggested they go to church. Ruth just nodded; it was easier than arguing, and she needed to get out of the apartment. She thought of the cool shadows inside the church, of the familiar scenes on the stained-glass windows, of the smell of incense.

Mass was ending as they arrived. Ruth slipped into one of the pews while Frank walked heavily toward the confessional. She bowed her head and closed her eyes but she did not pray. She wanted the comfort she had seen prayer bring to others, wanted the relief of confession and absolution, but she had lost her faith when her father died.

She remembered her mother’s prayers at his bedside, her father’s shuddering breaths, her own anger. She remembered sneaking out of the house one night, drinking rum in the backseat of someone’s car as they drove to North Point, needing to forget the scenes at home, laughing as Charlie Houston kissed her neck, laughing as he spilled sweet liquor on her arm and laughing as he licked it up, her heart racing as her father’s stopped as Charlie slid his hand up her skirt as her father died.

She remembered coming home at dawn to her mother’s fury. Refusing to feel ashamed. Refusing to feel. She remembered facing down her grief at the graveside, knowing herself as white and still while her mother raged red and wet and that voice shrieked blame: “You killed him! Running around and drinking and all the way you do—you killed him!”

There had been no room for her grief then. No one had wanted to see the madness or the ugliness of it. No one had wanted it, just as no one wanted it now. She remembered digging her nails into her palms to keep it down inside, and then looking up and seeing the crucified figure with nails in His, and laughing and shaking and gasping, and then walking away not knowing if she was laughing or crying any more.

And that was the last time she had been in a church, apart from her wedding day. Five months after her father’s death, her mother pink and tense with the haste of it all, with what people might think. The week before the wedding, Ruth had said almost absently, “Let them think what they like. They’ll soon know the truth when there’s no baby,” and had been shocked by her mother’s slap, by that sharp voice telling her not to be so vulgar.

She remembered running to her room and burying her face in her pillow, determined not to give her mother the satisfaction of hearing her tears. And even more determined to get married and to get out.

Now the idea of confessing to a priest made her feel afraid. The thought of shutting up her vulnerability in that tiny box, being unable to breathe or think, invisible to the man in front of her—his calm voice, his face scattered in the grille, his absolute possession of himself, his confidence in his God, his strength—those thoughts and images were unbearable. If she let herself open up, it would break the dam she had spent years building. And once released, she knew she would not be able to stem the rush of emotion. Far better to keep it under control, to keep herself safe and hidden.

And so when Frank came back from the confessional, she simply stood and walked toward the daylight at the back of the church, knowing he would follow.

In the car she smoothed out her white skirt and said to him, “I need to stop at the store.”

He turned to look at her, then back to the road. “We should get back, honey. Sergeant Devlin said he’d come by later. He has more questions for us.”

She stared straight ahead of her and thought of the backseat of the squad car the day before. Of the dirty windshield, the driver’s neck, of Devlin’s set profile as he took her to see the dead body of her child.

“I need to go shopping, Frank. I have to buy a new dress.”





6


Pete filed his first article on the Malone case and waited while Friedmann read it over, pacing the strip of carpet between the metro and crime desks until Jack Lamont told him to knock it off. He poured a cup of stale coffee from the pot in the hallway and took two sips before giving up and asking Janine to get him a Coke from the drugstore. Checked his reflection in the men’s room mirror and tried a smile to hide his apprehension. And then Friedmann bellowed from his office.

“VO-NICK-EE! In here, now!”

Friedmann had the piece in front of him. Every line was scored with blue pencil. He nodded at Pete to sit and then tapped the pages on the desk.

“This”—tap, tap—“is a piece of shit. It reads like a fucking college assignment. I don’t give a fuck about the weather, what it felt like to be on the scene, who else was there. I just want the fucking story, and so do the readers. What?”