Valentine(60)

Lady, she says instead, you look worn out.

Really, I say, because you look fantastic.

She laughs gently. Fair enough.

I’m fine—I reach into the diaper bag, pull out a tissue, and pat the sweat that’s threatening to ruin my makeup—looking forward to seeing justice served.

Is that so? Corrine reaches into the pocket of her housecoat and I am already thinking about having a cigarette, even if it means standing in the heat for a few more minutes, but then she lifts her shoulders apologetically. I am losing things left and right, she says. Cigarettes, matches, sleeping pills. Hell, I even managed to lose a saucepan and a jar of chow-chow. Grief makes you stupid, I guess. She winks at me, but she’s not smiling when she asks again how I’ve been sleeping.

I could tell her about the phone ringing day and night, the messages being left on my new answering machine, and the baby wanting to nurse every two or three hours. When he falls back to sleep, I pull my nipple out of his mouth and rise from my bed to check the doors and turn the lights on. I check and recheck the windows, listening carefully to every little sound, the wind drawing its fingers across a window screen or a pickup truck peeling out after the bar has closed or the plant whistle’s solitary wail. Sometimes I think I hear a window being tugged open at the other end of the house, and I am sure somebody is coming to harm us. And every night I think the same thing—once Dale Strickland is sentenced and sent to the penitentiary in Fort Worth, this will all die down. People will get bored and the late-night calls will stop, and I will have done my part to set things right for Gloria.

I hand the diaper bag to Corrine and tell her that I haven’t been sleeping well, but I expect to start doing so real soon. And by the way, I am also losing things right and left—cans of food, matchboxes, aspirin, even a couple of bath towels.

Must be something in the water, she says.

*

In the parking lot outside the courthouse, Keith Taylor hands me a paper cup filled with coffee that looks thick enough to clog a drain. Mr. Ramírez, the uncle? He called me again this morning, he says. She’s not coming, Mary Rose.

This should not surprise me—Keith has been warning me for weeks that Victor hasn’t let anyone from Keith’s office interview his niece since June, that they are not even sure where she’s living—but I still cry out, Why not?

Two men standing next to a tow truck look over at us. They wear sports coats over white shirts, cowboy hats, and top-dollar snakeskin boots. They stop talking to watch us for a few seconds, and then the one in the white Stetson leans forward and says something quietly in the other man’s ear. The man nods in our general direction and I fight the urge to yell at both of them, Y’all have something to say to me? You two sons of bitches been calling my house late at night?

Mary Rose, I warned you this might happen, Keith says. Mr. Ramírez doesn’t want to put her through it, and I can’t blame him. He raises his coffee cup and lifts one finger toward the men, a little greeting. He is tall and good-looking, known locally for his unwavering commitment to taking every case to trial and to remaining a bachelor. He is at least ten years older than me, but this morning he looks ten years younger, and about half as worn out.

She has to testify, I tell him. We stand together under the sun, me fighting the urge to yank at the waistband of my blue-jean skirt, the pavement burning a hole in my shoes. When the stenographer, Mrs. Henderson, walks past us with her arms full of file folders, Keith gently strokes his blond mustache with his index finger and puffs up his chest.

When she steps into the courthouse, he exhales and lets his shoulders fall back into their usual slight slump.

Look, Mary Rose, that girl has lost everything, even her mother, and Mr. Ramírez knows how some people around town are talking, he has to, and maybe he thinks she’s suffered enough. Maybe he doesn’t want to expose her to any more scrutiny.

I can hardly believe I am hearing this. That’s it? You’re going to let him do this?

Keith hitches up his slacks and wipes a bit of sweat off his forehead. He looks up at the sun like he wishes he could shoot it out of the sky. Honestly, he says, I don’t blame him, not even a little bit.

She ought to be in that courtroom, telling them what that bastard did to her. Can’t you make her testify?

No, Mary Rose, I cannot make her testify.

Well, how come? How are we going to get justice?

We? Keith laughs. You got a mouse in your pocket? He stands still for so long that several horseflies as big as peanuts land on his shirt. His hands are large and lightly freckled, and when he swats at the flies, hot air moves gently between us.

You know what I hate most about my job?

Losing a case?

Huh! You would think so, but no ma’am. He smiles and nods again at the two men who have started walking toward the courthouse doors. What I hate most, Mary Rose, is when somebody squirts hot sauce up my ass and tries to tell me it’s cool water. Pardon my French.

Keith takes a drink of his coffee and frowns—this is terrible—then he takes another. The cleaning crew that Mrs. Ramírez worked with? They’ve been cleaning office buildings in this town for years without anybody wanting to see their social security cards. Hell, they mopped floors and emptied trash cans at the courthouse for three years before the city council caught wind of it and got their undies in a wad. And five weeks after her daughter knocks on your front door, immigration is waiting for Mrs. Ramírez at the front gate when she finishes her shift at the plant? Bullshit, he says. Pardon my French.