“All right,” I said, “but let’s just say it wasn’t political, let’s say it was a personal act, would you still help him?”
“I consider him my brother,” Carter said. “Whatever his reasons were.”
“Then I’d better tell you what he wants,” I said. “He wants an attorney. A good one.”
“I’ll set it up,” Carter said.
I got up from the mattress and straightened my clothes. “I’ll see you at the theater,” I smiled.
“Now, I know what he wants,” Carter said to me, “a good lawyer. But does he know what I want, Nat?”
I stopped at the door. “What could you possibly want from him?” I asked.
“I want to use him,” Carter said simply.
“For what?” I asked.
“The cause,” Carter answered.
“I told you he’s not political,” I said.
“I don’t care.” Carter shrugged.
“Charming,” I said.
“I’m just being honest,” Carter said. “This bomber of yours can be instrumental in closing down Angel Landing Three, and he has to realize that if he takes help from Soft Skies he’s automatically one of us. He just is.”
“I’ll tell him” I said as I walked to the door. “But he may not agree.”
When I kissed Carter goodbye I felt as though I’d just betrayed him. I left him wrapped in delight, overjoyed at the prospect of meeting the Fishers Cove bomber, unaware that I had somehow been unfaithful, that my loyalties had shifted.
Now I felt as removed from Carter as I did from Minnie. Since the night I had met Finn, that night when I had found Minnie crying in the parlor, my aunt and I had avoided each other. We still had breakfast and dinner together, but we were polite, our conversation was no more than small talk. It had been six days since that meeting in the field and nothing that had happened since seemed real, time moved differently now, as if the second hand on every clock was stuck in honey. I was conscious of waiting, aware of every hour that passed.
On that Tuesday we were to meet again I watched the street from my office window. I wondered if Finn would really return, or if he would appear to me only once. My morning appointments each seemed to last hours, days; and at lunchtime, when I went across the street to Ruby’s Café, I found I couldn’t eat the sandwich I ordered, even coffee seemed much too heavy. My three-o’clock appointment was with Jack, the young truant, and I dreaded our meeting; often Jack failed to speak one word during our fifty-minute session. This week, however, was quite different; this week he had decided to talk about his aspirations.
“What I’d really like,” Jack confessed, “is a motorcycle.”
I didn’t bother to turn from the window to answer. “Oh, Jack,” I said, annoyed that he was no more realistic than he had been on the day he was first dragged into my office by the high-school truant officer. “It’s eighteen degrees out there. No one drives a motorcycle in this sort of weather.”
“Not for now,” Jack said dreamily. “I’d ride it this summer.”
“Really?” I said. “Your family can’t afford anything like that. With no education and no job, how are you ever going to get yourself a motorcycle?”
Jack blinked. “I know I’m not really going to get one.”
I looked over at the boy, wondering if I had been too rough.
“It’s all up to you,” I said. “I’m sure if you really want something badly enough, you’ll manage to get it.”
“No,” Jack said softly. He ran a hand through his fine long hair. “I’ll never have a motorcycle. I was just dreaming about it.”
Jack stared at the carpet, but his eyes blinked rapidly, holding back tears.
“I’m sure you’ll have a motorcycle someday,” I said.
Jack shook his head. “No, I never will.”
There was a knock at the door, and I was grateful to have reason to look away from poor Jack.
“Yes?” I called.
Emily opened the door a crack and peered inside. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to interrupt, but there’s someone here who claims to have an appointment.”
I bit my lip; it had to be him: early for his appointment, Michael Finn.
“Jack,” I said, “would you mind if the session ended now?”
“Okay,” Jack shrugged.
“That won’t be necessary,” I heard my aunt Minnie say. “This will only take a minute.”
“You’ll just have to wait,” Emily said, blocking the door with her body.
Minnie slammed a shopping bag against Emily’s shins. “You’re blocking the door,” she grumbled.
“You’re damn right,” Emily cried, unglued and rubbing at her shins.
“It’s all right,” I said. “This is my aunt.”
“Really?” Emily said, raising her eyebrows as she backed out of the office.
Minnie closed the door tightly. “Don’t worry,” she told Jack as she put down her shopping bag and dragged a hard-backed chair next to him. “This won’t interfere with you. You stay right where you are,” she nodded as she unbuttoned her camel’s hair coat.
“You can’t do this,” I told my aunt.
“I wouldn’t unless I absolutely had to. This is an emergency. I don’t think he minds,” she pointed at Jack. “Do you mind?” she asked the boy.
“Me?” Jack said.
Minnie nodded. “Because as far as I’m concerned, you’re the boss. If you say stay, I’ll stay. If you say go, I’m on my way,” she told the boy confidentially.
“Please stay,” Jack said.
“What do you want?” I said. “Briefly.”
“This is the place to go when you’re depressed, so here I am,” Minnie said.
“This is the place,” Jack agreed.
“But you haven’t mentioned this to me at home,” I said, thinking of our polite dinners and formal teas. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“So?” Minnie shrugged. “You’ve been avoiding me, too. And this is business. This isn’t chitchat over dinner. I need professional help.”
“I’ll make an appointment for you,” I said. “But I really think you should see a therapist who isn’t related to you.”
Minnie waved her hand in the air. “If you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?” She turned to Jack. “I never thought I’d see the day when I needed therapy.”
Jack nodded solemnly. “I know what you mean.”
“Jack,” I said, “is this really all right with you?”
“Fine,” Jack smiled.
“I’m very depressed,” Minnie told us. “Very.” She stared at the ceiling with watery eyes. “Some nights I start crying and I just can’t stop.”
“Oh, no,” Jack said.
Jack had stopped blinking; he watched Minnie carefully, and with real concern.
“Go on,” I said to my aunt.
“Frankly, it’s the nursing home. I’ve always been involved in this and in that,” she explained to Jack. “Writing letters. Mobilizing my family. But this is different. Every day when I go there, there’s another empty bed.”
“Someone’s died?” Jack asked.
“You’ve got it. Sometimes the bed is made—all tucked in very nicely, as if no one had ever slept there. Sometimes the sheets are rumpled. Once I saw a pillowcase stained with blood. Every time I see one of these empty beds I imagine myself lying there, not able to speak; I can’t even call out or scream. I’m trapped in an old body. In a bed.”
“You’re identifying too closely,” I warned.
“Of course I am,” Minnie snapped. “I’m old.”
“You’re not that old,” Jack said to Minnie, but he was too shy to look at her as he spoke.
Minnie smiled, but when she saw Jack light a cigarette she poked his arm. “At your age, you smoke? I bet you drink Coke, too. What are you doing to yourself?”
“Me?” Jack said.
“Take my advice,” she said. “Fast for three days. Then cut out all cigarettes, m
eat, and chemicals.”
“We were talking about your problem,” I said. “Jack has the right to make his own decisions about his life.”
“I could get into fasting,” Jack said.
“Just water,” Minnie told him. “And a little fruit juice in the morning. It will pick you right up.”
“Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that you’re helping some old people?” I said, wanting to move on, away from the topic of Jack’s diet.
“Old people,” Minnie sighed.
“What about the socks you were going to bring for the ladies?”
“Those ladies don’t know if they’re coming or going. Those ladies are tied into their wheelchairs.”
“The socks,” I said.
“The socks are still in the drawer at the reception booth. The nurses don’t want to be bothered.”
“That’s terrible,” Jack said.
“Of course it is,” Minnie nodded.
“You have to be realistic,” I said. “You can do some things to help, but you can’t fight the entire bureaucracy.”
“Oh, no?” Minnie smiled. “I got myself some very interesting information. When the nurses were between shifts, I went to the supervisor’s office and discovered that even though Mercy is funded by the county, it’s privately administered. This morning I went to the library and looked up the board chairman in the Fishers Cove social register. The fellow’s name is Allen Crest, and the most interesting thing is that he’s married to Congressman Bruner’s sister, Yvette Bruner Crest.”
“For someone who’s so depressed, you certainly have been doing a lot of research,” I said.
“Oh sure,” Minnie shrugged. “I intend to find this Allen Crest and see to it that he makes some improvements.”
“There you go,” I nodded. “You’re helping other people, you should feel great about yourself.”
“But who’ll do something for me? Who’ll take care of me? The Lanskys? I never even get a phone call from any of them. Not even from Ephraim Lansky, and that old man used to write to me once a week until his son bought a condominium in Atlantic City. Who’s going to watch out for me when I get taken to Mercy?”
“You’re perfectly healthy,” I told my aunt. “You’re not about to go into a nursing home.”
“Not today. Not right this minute. But what about tomorrow? I could fall down the stairs and break both of my hips. That’s how brittle bones get when they’re old,” Minnie confided to Jack.
“You can’t worry so much about the future that you’re paralyzed in the present,” I said.
“Oh yes I can,” Minnie said softly.
I looked at my aunt carefully: her hands, which were once powerful enough to direct a whole house full of Lanskys with one wave, were now an old woman’s hands; the lines on her face ran together to form a creviced graph; her long legs were never warm, not even when she wore three pairs of woolen knee socks. There might soon be a day when Beaumont moved out of her house; I certainly didn’t plan to stay forever; and then Minnie would be alone. The house would be empty; one day Minnie would be so frail that she would no longer be able to lift wood into the parlor stove. Death would come to her slowly; when she was found, weeks, perhaps months later, Minnie would be lying on the hardwood floor like a lonely artifact, her skin would be blue, and when she was carried from her parlor, the ice which had formed on her skin would melt in huge drops, and all that would be left to be taken down the porch steps would be an old woman who had frozen to death in her own house.
“Oh, Minnie,” I said.
“I’ve never felt sorry for myself. Not in my entire life,” Minnie said. “Not until now.”
“I’ll take care of you,” Jack volunteered.
Minnie sat up straight. “At the moment I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, thank you.”
“When you can’t.”
“He’s cute,” Minnie said to me.
“I mean it,” Jack insisted, his eyes glowing with dedication.
“No,” Minnie shook her head. “You have better things to do.”
“I don’t have anything better to do,” the boy confided.
Jack spent his days avoiding school, drinking gallons of soda in coffee shops and diners; at three-fifteen he returned home to a family who would not have noticed if he never returned.
Minnie glared at the boy. “Do you think you’ll live forever? Do you think you can just waste time?”
I cleared my throat. “Well,” I said, “I think our session is over.”
“This is it?” Minnie said. “This is therapy?”
“Did you expect to come to terms with death and old age in five minutes?”
“Yes,” Minnie nodded, “I had hoped to.”
“You can’t expect miracles,” I said.
“Well, if this is it, I’m very dissatisfied,” Minnie said. “Very.”
“Me, too,” Jack sighed.
“You?” Minnie said to Jack. “You’re too young to be dissatisfied. What you need is the proper diet. The right vegetables would fix you right up.”
“Jack has other problems,” I said. “School. His family.”
Minnie ignored me. “Do you know what happens to people who don’t get enough vitamin E?” Minnie asked Jack. “They disappear. Their skin becomes as thin as tissue paper.”
“Minnie,” I warned.
“My dear, it’s a fact,” my aunt said.
When Minnie reached over to my desk for paper and pen so that she could write out a personalized diet for Jack, I walked to the window.
I cleaned off the window with my palm and looked down at Main Street. Suddenly, he appeared; his face was hidden in shadows and I almost overlooked the man with the turned-up collar who shivered in the doorway of Ruby’s Café, the man who looked into my window. It was Finn. “You’ve got to go,” I said to Minnie and Jack.
“Just a minute,” Minnie snapped, but she did stand up to button her coat. “I’m going to take an extra spoonful of brewer’s yeast with dinner,” she whispered to Jack. “It’s marvelous for depression.”
By the time Minnie had put on her hat and gloves, and picked up her shopping bag, Emily knocked on the door. I rushed past Minnie and Jack, and slid the door open.
“Do you have group therapy today?” Emily asked. “Because there’s someone else who says he has an appointment with you.”
“Send him in,” Minnie called.
When I opened the door wider, there was Finn, peering inside the office cautiously, like a thief ready to run.
I went over to Finn and took his arm. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said as I led him inside. Then I closed the door quickly to block any quick escapes.
Minnie handed Jack his diet, and then looked up. “Oh,” she said. “Is this the bomber?”
Finn looked betrayed. “What is this?” he said, his voice breaking like a teenager’s.
“This is my aunt, who was just leaving. And this is Jack—he has a problem with school—who was also just leaving. This is Michael Finn, who is here because of marital problems,” I lied, hoping that Finn would not panic and flee.
“Ah,” Minnie said. “He’s married. Too bad.”
Finn stood as still as a wild animal; he watched Minnie with wide eyes.
I opened the door and nodded to Minnie. “Your time is up,” I told her.
“I’m going,” Minnie said. “I’ve got some vitamin C in here that I’m taking over to the nursing home.” She rattled her shopping bag. “But I think you could use a bottle yourself,” she told Jack as they left the office together. After Jack and Minnie had gone, and the door was shut behind them, I could still hear my aunt’s voice in the waiting room, prescribing five hundred milligrams of vitamin C each morning, and advising Jack never again to drink a carbonated beverage.
“I trusted you,” Finn whispered.
“I wasn’t certain if you really did,” I said, feeling both pleased and surprised.
“You told her,” Finn said. “You told t
hat old woman about me.”
“She’s not an old woman, she’s my aunt,” I said. “I did once mention that someone came to me claiming to be the bomber, but I never told her who. I never even mentioned your name.”
Finn paced across the room. “What if she tells someone about me? What if she goes to the police?”
“Minnie?” I said. “She would never go to the police.”
Finn looked at me carefully. “Who else have you told?”
“Now wait a minute,” I said, “I could get in trouble, too. I could lose my job for not reporting your activities to my supervisor. Outreach has rules about this sort of thing. I’m taking a chance, too, you know.”
Michael Finn sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m so goddamned nervous,” he said. “I’m falling apart.”
Instead of walking behind my desk to my usual chair, I sat where Minnie had sat. “Please don’t worry so much,” I said. “Carter’s going to meet us in forty-five minutes at the Cove Theater. He’ll have gotten you an attorney by then.”
“A movie theater?” Finn said, surprised.
“He has a tremendous fear of being followed,” I explained, and Finn nodded knowingly.
“I’d like to turn myself in,” Finn said. “I’d like to get the whole thing over with.”
We sat side by side, not looking at each other. Still, from the corner of my eye, I could see that he was shaking, as if the office were filled to the ceiling with danger. I reached out without thinking; when I touched his wrist I felt his skin jump beneath my fingers.
I moved my hand away, and Finn looked down at his wrist. “I don’t want to go to jail,” he said.
“Carter will find you a really good lawyer,” I said. “Of course, you may have to do a little something for Soft Skies in return.”
“Like what?” Finn asked. “I’m not going to any demonstration.”
“Just some publicity,” I guessed. “A few personal appearances after the trial.”
“After the trial,” Finn smiled.
“After today your lawyer will take care of everything. You just have to relax and trust him.”
“Oh yeah?” Finn said. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. “Trust a lawyer?” He quickly lit a match and inhaled. “Listen,” he told me, “there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”