“It was. But it was a while ago, and I lived through it. I’ve thought about throwing the meds away, but they remind me of where I was. Of how far I’ve come. Kate says I’m supposed to be proud of that. Make an affirmation, every morning.” He rolls his eyes. “Can you see it? Me, facing a mirror, saying to myself, ‘I’m proud of you, Ned. I’m proud of you, Ned’.” He bursts into laughter. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m proud of you, Ned.”
He laughs. “I’m proud of you, Mary.”
“No, I mean it. I am proud of you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re not going to pack?”
I shake my head. It’s hard to speak. I feel so much for him.
His green eyes narrow like a cat’s in the sun. “Even though I’m not as cool as you thought?”
“You’re cooler than I thought.”
“Oh, therapy is cool, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s the nineties. Decade of the Democrats.”
“Right.” He laughs. “Then you won’t mind that I still see Kate.”
“You do?”
“Three times a week, at lunchtime. Her office is like home now, only better. I always hated my house. My father’s house, I should say.”
“What’s the story with your father? You were going to tell me.”
“He’s a tyrant. He thinks he’s God. He ran our house like he runs Masterson. Produce or you’re out of here!” Ned’s tone turns suddenly angry. Beneath the anger I can hear the hurt.
“Is that why you haven’t talked to him in so long?”
“I haven’t talked to him since the day I had to keep him from strangling my mother. For changing a seating arrangement without his permission.”
“My God.”
“Nice guy, huh?”
“Did that happen a lot? That he’d be violent, I mean.”
“I was away at school, so I didn’t see it. I knew it was happening, though.” He leans back on his hands. “Denial is a funny thing. You’re in this place where you know but you don’t know. You’re keeping secrets from yourself. I think that’s what my trust fund’s for. He screwed me up, but at least he gave me the means to figure out how.” He laughs, but it sounds empty this time.
“Why do you think your father wanted to meet me?”
“I bet he knows we went out the other night. I think he keeps tabs on me.”
I sit up straight, slowly. I remember the look on his father’s face when he stormed into the glass-walled conference room, his fury barely held in check. It’s not hard to believe that he’d be violent with his wife. Or even that he could kill. “You mean he follows you? Or has you followed?”
Ned looks stricken as he makes the connection. “What are you saying? You think he killed Brent? You think he’s trying to kill you?”
“Do you?”
“Why would he?”
“So that you can make partner at Stalling. To assure your position.”
“No. No, I can’t imagine that. It’s inconceivable. Uh-uh.” He shakes his head.
“But you said he keeps tabs on you.”
“Not that way. I think he hears things, finds out the gossip. I don’t think he follows me around. No way.”
“Are you sure, Ned? If you’re not, we should give his name to the police.”
“Mary, he’s my father, for Christ’s sake. Let me talk to him first.”
“You want to? After fifteen years?”
“Yes. Just give me a couple of days and I’ll talk to him. If I have any suspicions at all, we’ll call the cops. I’m not going to take any chances with your safety, you know that.”
The telephone rings suddenly. Ned reaches past me to the night table and picks it up. “Hello? Sure, Judy. She’s right here.” He covers the receiver with his hand. “I’ll take that shower.”
I nod, and he hands me the phone. As he gets up, the comforter falls away. He walks to the closet without a second thought to his nakedness. A man thing.
Judy starts talking before I even have the phone to my ear. “Mary, what’s the matter? What are you doing at Ned’s?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you since Friday night. Where were you?”
Ned takes his bathrobe from a hook on his closet door and leaves the bedroom.
“It’s a long story,” she says. “My brother was going to Princeton, and I had to… forget it. What’s going on with you? What are you doing at Ned’s, of all places? I just got your messages.”
“It’s bad news, Judy. Very bad.” I swallow hard.
“What?”
“Is Kurt around? Are you alone?” From the bathroom, I hear the metallic scrape of the shower curtain on its rod and the sound of water turned on.
“He’s in New York, but he should be home any minute. Why are you at Ned’s — in the morning?”
“I’ll explain later. Judy, listen.”
I take a deep breath. I have to tell her about Brent. It reminds me of when I had to tell her about Mike. My parents had called her from the hospital, but she wasn’t home. I reached her later with the news. It was awful. I could barely speak; she could barely speak. She practically moved into my apartment. Judy, more than anyone, got me through the funeral.
“Mary? What’s going on?”
I tell her the whole story, and that I think it was the same car that’s been following me. All she says, over and over, is, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Her voice sounds faint and tinny on the other end of the line.
“Do you think he suffered?” she asks finally.
I remember Brent’s face and the agonized expression on it when the car plowed into him. There’s no reason to tell Judy that. “I don’t know.”
“Poor Brent. Poor, poor Brent. Oh, my God.”
The water shuts off in the shower. I hear Ned banging around in the bathroom.
“What are you doing at Ned’s?”
“I came here. I thought he did it.”
“So why are you still there? Brent is killed and you’re at Ned’s?”
“It’s not him, Judy.”
“I can’t believe you. What are you doing?”
I hear Ned scrubbing his teeth, humming to himself tunelessly.
“He’s been wonderful to me, Judy. He—”
“You’re fucking Ned Waters? Mary, is that what you’re doing?” She sounds angry.
“It’s not like—”
“You’re in danger, Mary! We don’t know anything about him. He has every reason to try and hurt you.”
Ned switches off the water in the bathroom, and I hear him walking toward the bedroom. His off-key hum has segued into an off-key march. H.M.S. Pinafore, as sung by a coyote.
“He’d never do that, Judy.”
“But Mary!”
Ned appears in the doorway to the bedroom, bundled up in a thick terry robe. His wet hair is spiky and uncombed; his beard is slightly stubbly. He balls up a damp towel and shoots it at a wicker hamper across the room. It goes in, barely, and he grins at me.
“Don’t worry, Jude. I’m fine.”
“Is he right there? You can’t talk, can you.”
“Not exactly.”
“I think you should get out of there.”
“I’m fine, Jude. You can call here if you need to. Whenever you need to.”
Ned sits down on the bed behind me. I feel his hands on my back, still warm from the shower.
“But what if it’s him?” Judy says.
“I’m fine. I really am.”
Ned massages my shoulders, pressing into them from behind. His touch is firm, insistent. I can feel the tightness in my muscles begin to disappear.
“You’re making a big mistake, Mary.”
“Believe me, I’m okay.”
He applies more pressure, and his fingers knead the top of my shoulders. I move my neck from side to side, and it loosens up.
“We’ll talk tonight. Look for me before the service.”
“Good. Take care.” I han
g up. I wish she wouldn’t worry about me with Ned. My shoulders are warm and tingly underneath his hands.
“How does that feel?” Ned asks softly.
“Terrific.”
“So Judy’s worried about you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She thinks I’m the bad guy.”
“Honestly, yes.”
“I thought so.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Therapy 101. You can’t control what people think.”
“Lawyering 101. Yes, you can.”
He laughs. “Close your eyes, sweetheart.”
I close my eyes and concentrate on the gentle kneading motion of his fingers on my shoulders.
“Let your head relax. Let it fall forward.”
So I do, like a rag doll, as his hands work their way to my neck. He takes it slow, inch by inch. It reminds me of the way he made love to me, in the darkness. He didn’t rush anything. He felt it, that’s why.
“Everything’s gonna be all right, Mary,” he says quietly.
I almost believe him.
19
That evening, I’m sitting between my parents and Ned at Brent’s memorial service. It’s at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, an elegant old building on Rittenhouse Square, not six blocks from where Brent was killed. Some of Brent’s friends put flowers on the sidewalk in front of the bank today, and his death was all over the news. They called it a “hit-and-run accident,” which to me is a contradiction in terms. But it doesn’t matter what the TV says. The only thing that matters is what the police say. I wonder if Lombardo will be here tonight.
I look around at the crowd, which appears to be growing larger by the minute, but I don’t see Lombardo. The service is full of friends from the nonintersecting circles of Brent’s life. There are his gay friends, the biggest group by far, as well as his fellow voice students, and a contingent from Stalling. Judy’s here with Kurt, and so are most of the secretaries from the office, sitting together in a teary clump that includes Delia, Annie Zirilli, and Stella. Even Stalling’s personnel manager is here, the one who gave Brent such a hard time about the tray. She eyes the gay men with contempt. Her expression says, I knew it.
Watching her, I remember what Brent said just last week. When I die, I want my ashes ground into the carpet at Stalling & Webb. He wasn’t kidding.
I look down at the program with his picture on the front. A smiling face in a black shirt, surrounded by a skinny black border. This should not be. He’s not supposed to die; he’s too young to be inside a skinny black border. He would have said, What’s wrong with this picture?
My mother touches my hand, and I give hers a perfunctory squeeze. I don’t want to feel anything tonight. I want to be numb.
The eulogies begin, and Brent’s voice coach is the first to speak. She’s a bosomy brunette, middle-aged and wearing lipstick that’s theatrically red. Brent once described her to me as robust; actually he said robusty. But she doesn’t look robust tonight: She looks broken. Her speaking voice, which has a remarkable timbre, sounds so grief-stricken I can’t bear to listen. I look around the room and spot Lombardo, sitting alone on one of the folding chairs against the wall. His hair is slicked down with water and he wears an ill-fitting black raincoat. He looks like an overgrown altar boy, not somebody smart enough to catch Brent’s killer. And maybe Mike’s.
“He had a fine voice, mind you,” the singing coach is saying. Her head is held high, her posture almost a dancer’s. “But Brent was never ambitious in music. He never entered any of the competitions I told him to, even when I got him the forms. He refused to do it. ‘I won’t go on Star Search, Margaret,’ he said to me. ‘Dance Fever, maybe. But Star Search, never.’”
There’s laughter at this, and quiet sniffles.
“Brent studied because he loved music with all his heart. He sang because he loved to sing. It was an end in itself for him. I used to try to instill that in all my students, but I stopped after I met Brent. That was the lesson Brent taught me. You can’t teach joy.” She faces the audience in a dignified way, then steps away from the podium.
There is utter silence.
I try not to think about what she said.
Two young men appear on the dais. One is almost emaciated, obviously very sick, and is being physically supported by the other. Both wear red ribbons, which on them means more than it does on all the Shannen Dohertys put together.
I know I cannot hear this.
I screen it all out.
I go somewhere else in my mind.
I think about what Judy said before the service started. How she apologized for being sharp with me on the phone. How she really doesn’t trust Ned. Nothing I said could change her mind. It was the closest we’ve come to a fight, and at the end she backed off. Her nerves were frayed, she said. I look over at her, weeping quietly, with Kurt at her side. She loved Brent too. That’s why she’s acting so crazy.
The eulogies are almost over, and someone’s introducing the final speaker.
Mr. Samuel Berkowitz.
I look up in amazement.
Sure enough, it is Berkowitz, lumbering up to the flower-filled podium in a dark suit. He adjusts a microphone barely camouflaged by Easter lilies and clears his throat. “I didn’t know Brent Polk very well, but as I listen to you all here today, I wish I had. What I do know about Brent is that he was an intelligent young man, a fine secretary, and a good and loyal friend to many people. Also, that he broke every rule my stuffy old law firm holds dear.”
There’s laughter at this, and renewed sniffles. I smile myself, and feel so proud of Berkowitz for being here. He has more class than any of them put together. I squeeze Ned’s hand, but he’s not smiling. Neither are my parents; they look somber and upset. They must be thinking of Mike. They hardly knew Brent.
“In addition, I would like to announce a donation in Brent’s name, which has been authorized by my partners at Stalling and Webb. Tomorrow we give ten thousand dollars on Brent Polk’s behalf to Pennsylvanians Against Drunk Driving. It is our sincere hope that we can help prevent what happened to Brent from happening to other fine young men and women. Thank you.” Applause breaks out as Berkowitz steps down and disappears into the crowd.
“What are they talking about?” I whisper to Ned, over the din.
“I don’t know.” He looks grim.
“Drunk driver, my ass!”
My mother nudges me. Don’t talk in church, says the nudge.
I wheel around and look at Lombardo. His dull eyes warn me to relax. Drunk driver? I mouth to him.
He puts a finger to his lips.
Christ! I can barely contain myself. Brent is murdered in cold blood, and they’re going to say it was drunk driving? It’s all I can do after the service not to pound directly over to him, but I have to take care of my parents first. Ned and I help them down the steps of the Art Alliance and wait with them for a cab. My mother’s eyes are smudged and teary behind her glasses; my father looks crestfallen.
“I don’t like that man from your office, Maria,” she says. “The big one. You know which one I mean? The big one?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“No. I don’t like that man at all.” She shakes her head, and her heavy glasses slip down.
“Why not, Mrs. DiNunzio?” Ned asks, with a faint smile.
She holds up a finger, mysteriously. “Thin lips. You can’t even find the man’s lips. Like pencil lines, they are.”
“Ma. His lips aren’t thin. It’s just your eyes.”
“Don’t be fresh, I saw them. He’s got the thin lips. Mark my words.”
Ned seems amused by this. “He’s the boss, Mrs. DiNunzio.”
She drills her index finger into the hand-stitched lapel of Ned’s coat. “I don’t care who he is. I don’t like him.”
“Don’t give the kids no trouble, Vita,” says my father. “They got enough trouble right now. A world of trouble.”
“I’m not giving them trouble, Matty. I’m taking
care of Maria!” People leaving the service look over, startled at the loudness of her voice. “That’s what mothers are for! That’s a mother’s job, Matty.”
A yellow cab stops at the light, and I wave it down.
“Look at Maria, Veet,” says my father, momentarily cheered. “Just like a big city girl.” My mother looks at me proudly. I’ve hailed a cab, mirabile dictu.
“Please, guys. Don’t embarrass me in front of Ned, okay? I’m trying to make a good impression.”
My father smiles, and my mother gives me a shove. “You. Always with the jokes.”
The cab pulls up and Ned opens the door for them. I lean down and give them both a quick kiss. Ned helps my father into the dark cab, but my mother is tougher to shake. She grabs me by my coat and whispers, “Call me. I want to talk to you about this young man.”
“Okay, I’ll call you.”
She whispers loudly into my ear. “It’s good to see you with someone. You’re too young to put yourself up on the shelf.”
“Ma…”
She looks at Ned sternly. “You take good care of my daughter. Or you answer to me!”
“I will,” he says, surprised.
“Time to go, Ma.” I fight the urge to push her into the cab.
“We love you, doll,” says my father, as my mother gets in.
“Love you too,” I say, closing the heavy door with relief. I feel like I’ve tucked them into bed. I wave, and the cab pulls away.
Ned gives me a hug. “They’re wonderful,” he says happily.
“The Flying DiNunzios. They’re something, aren’t they?”
“You’re lucky, you know.”
“I know, but let’s not get into it now. Help me find Lombardo.” I squint at the crowd coming out of the building’s narrow front doors.
“I don’t know what he looks like.”
“Fred Flintstone.”
Judy comes out with Kurt, who has managed to find a suit jacket for the occasion. She waves good-bye over the sea of people. I wave back.
Ned points over at the far edge of the crowd. “Is that him?”
“Yes!” Sure enough, it’s Lombardo. I flag him down and he finally spots me. Even from a distance, his expression tells me he wishes he hadn’t.
“Don’t get upset, Mary.”