Claire picked up the first photo again, the one of Allen and Elizabeth and the ring, then put it back down on the table. “Elizabeth killed herself.” She was trying to get everything straight. She picked up the ring, weighing it in her palm, then closed her fingers over it. “But before she did, she broke off her engagement with Allen.”
“Yes.” Charlie nodded, her gaze steady on Claire, as if she already knew what she would say next.
“But why? Listening to what you say, I can understand her not wanting to marry Allen. But why did she have to kill herself?”
“It all happened so quickly. She had been nothing but talk, talk, talk about the wedding the last time I saw her alive. Some girls focus on the wedding, not on what will happen afterward. Maybe Elizabeth looked at the future and realized she could not live with Allen. Not with him being crippled and cold. And then perhaps she was afraid that everyone would judge her.”
Claire opened her fingers, displaying the ring. “Okay. Elizabeth breaks off the wedding. She gives the ring back to Allen. Then she kills herself. So why did I find this in the wall?”
The ring made a hollow noise when she set it down on the table.
Chapter 7
The last time that Charlie saw Elizabeth alive was the Saturday before her death, when the loose group of friends had gone for an impromptu picnic down by the river. The day was warm, eighty degrees by noon, the sky a saturated blue. With Warren Lisac’s permission, Tom knocked off at lunchtime. Laughing, the group all piled into Tom’s truck. Charlie sat beside him in the cab. Allen’s leg prevented him from clambering into the trunk bed with the rest. He grunted as he pulled himself onto the bench seat to sit next to Charlie. Elizabeth, Frank, Mary, Howard and Nova sat in the truck’s bed. When Tom went around corners, they screamed as if they were on a carnival ride. Tom’s hand caressed Charlie’s knee every time he changed gears, which he did more than was strictly necessary. Beside Charlie, Allen made a point of looking out the window, away from her bare knees and Tom’s big, rough hand, his expression shuttered. He hadn’t even been gone a year, but he had left a boy, marching off willingly to defend from Communism a nation he had barely heard of, and came back a quiet man whose every word, expression and step was now carefully contemplated before it was even begun.
Dozens of people had been drawn to the river – to picnic, to fish, to swim in the water, or at least dangle their toes in it. Austrid had packed them a big wicker picnic basket. Deviled eggs. A Mason jar of home-canned pickles. Ham sandwiches slathered with mustard and wrapped in waxed paper. Charlie wondered at bit at the choice of filling, the way she always wondered when Austrid’s eyes lingered on her a little too long, the older woman’s face expressionless. A basket of the last of the Totem strawberries, dark red and no bigger than the end of Charlie’s thumb, the flavor like a distillation of the entire summer. With his pocketknife, Tom hacked chunks from a heavy watermelon. The men had a contest to see who could spit one of the black seeds the furthest. Everyone laughed when Nova joined in, and then laughed even harder when she won.
Charlie took pictures of them all. Her past was gone, reduced to nothing but memories. Even these she denied herself, for fear that she would drown in them, never surfacing for air. When she had first moved to America she found herself taking pictures of everything. Occasionally of objects, the curve of a hand-carved wooden bowl, two hairpins on the tumbled white sheets of her unmade bed, but more often of people. There was something fundamentally innocent about Americans that drew her. After Elizabeth’s death, though, she reached for her camera less and less often.
#
There was a before. And there was an after. And in between there was nothing Charlie could bear to think about. Yet still it haunted her.
Eight thousand miles away, fifty years later, Charlie still found herself studying people’s faces, wondering if they would have helped her. The businessman walking briskly past her, who pressed his thin lips together and then looked away. Would he have shared his bread ration with her? The woman with two babies in a double stroller, talking on her cell phone – would she have held Charlie up when she couldn’t walk? Generosity came from unexpected places, she had learned that, but cruelty, too. In the camp, people shriveled or blossomed into something else entirely.
Chapter 8
H20MEN4
“Clearly, whatever happened,” Charlie said as they both regarded the ring, glinting dully on the dining room table, “you must return the ring to Allen Lisac. It belongs to his family.”
“That Mr. Backus said the Lisacs wouldn’t be back from Europe for a few days.” Claire looked down it the ring, tarnished now not only by time but by her knowledge of its past. “Maybe he won’t even want it back. Who would want to wear a ring that belonged to someone who committed suicide?”
“I have read that many suicides come from anger. If she were wanting to hurt Allen, perhaps Elizabeth would have still been wearing this when we found her. But I’m sure there was no ring on her hand when we found her. And I’m sure Allen said she gave it back to him. So why was it in the wall? Everything happened so quickly. One day Elizabeth was chattering away about the wedding, and then a few weeks later she was dead. It made little sense. At the time, I did not ask questions. Perhaps I should have.” She straightened up. “Nova and she were as thick as thieves. They shared all their secrets. Not that Elizabeth probably had any to be sharing. I am sure she just listened to Nova’s tales of adventure. But if anyone would know why Elizabeth hid the ring instead of giving it back, Nova would.”
“Would Nova even still be alive?”
Charlie made a small sound of annoyance. “You seem to forget that I am several years older than she. Besides, I got a Christmas card from her last year.”
Claire backpedaled. “You said she smoked and drank, so I…”
Waving her hand in dismissal, Charlie said. “I am only teasing. And Nova is alive, although she is living now in Riverwalk.” She grimaced. “I think I would rather be dead than there.”
An unknown marketer had sold Charlie’s name and address to every company that catered to seniors. Each day’s mail brought slick ads for hearing aid centers, coupons for Ensure and Depends, and pleas that Charlie join AARP. One of the most frequent offenders was Riverwalk. It billed itself as “Portland’s premiere retirement community!” offering “A new lifestyle for seniors where we supply the adventure, fun and friendship!” Whoever wrote the marketing materials believed fervently in the use of exclamation points.
Claire had looked through one of the brochures once after she running out of other reading material while eating lunch. As far as she could tell, they roped you in with one of the “Homes on Riverwalk,” detached single-story houses with views of the golf course, and discreet ramps leading up to the front porches. Inside were high ceilings, big rooms, and showers with a hidden sit-down option. Just like a condo, you didn’t have to do any yard work, unless you wanted to tend a plot in the community garden. Each home came with a thirty-meal plan so that you could either “cook in your own kitchen or enjoy dining with your new friends in the Riverwalk dining room.”
It wasn’t until the brochure’s third panel that certain polite phrases began to crop up. “We work with you as your needs increase,” or “We offer security for the rest of your life.” In other words, Riverwalk was the kind of place you went to die. Even the home you started out with had emergency call buttons in every room, including one tucked in a corner of the bathroom floor. The guest bedroom with its separate bath could easily be turned into a space for the live-in attendant. And “if your care needs should increase,” well, you could move – or be moved - into Riverwalk’s separate skilled nursing facility, the secure Alzheimer’s ward, or the hospice wing mentioned in small print on the brochure’s final panel.
That evening, Charlie unearthed Nova’s phone number. When she called, Charlie didn’t mention anything about the ring. She simply said she wanted to talk about old times, then mentioned she might bring al
ong a friend. When Charlie hung up, she said, “Nova says it’s fine if you come along. She said that Riverwalk is a gated community, and that normally, they are very protective about having strangers who aren’t” - she hooked her fingers - “‘seniors’ on ‘campus,’ but there is to be an open house this weekend.”
“What – they all have to be locked up for their own protection? They think that once you’re old it’s not safe to let you associate with the rest of society?” Claire imagined fast-talking vacuum cleaner door-to-door salesmen lined up three-deep.
“Riverwalk is very expensive. Maybe it is not so much to keep them in as to keep the riff-raff out.”
“How can Nova afford to live there? Did she marry money?”
Charlie grinned. “Divorced money, with the help of a good attorney, which may be even better.”
#
After finishing up at Capitol Hill Elementary, drove to her mom’s house. For the past few years, Claire had been a volunteer with the SMART program – Start Making A Reader Today. For an hour a day, she worked one-on-one with Jason, a seven-year-old who had attention deficit disorder. Jason came from an impoverished household, both mentally and physically. For Jason, the books the SMART program gave him were the only ones in his apartment.
People tended to think of Southwest Portland residents as having money, but there were pockets of poverty all the same. Just as many people lived among Barbur Boluevard’s ragged jumble of cheap restaurants, gas stations, and businesses like Baby Dolls Modeling and Lingerie, as did in the terraced heights of West Hills. Claire wasn’t supposed to get involved in the Jason’s home life, but driving to her mother’s, it was hard for Claire not to fantasize about taking Jason home.
Jason lived with his mechanic dad in one of Barbur’s run-down motels. There didn’t seem to be a mom, just a 17-year-old brother, Matt. From the scraps of information Claire had been able to piece together, Matt probably used, and possibly sold, drugs. Every time Claire saw Jason, he was wearing the same oversized red flannel shirt and dirty jeans, but still curiosity and intelligence shone from him. How long would it be before his circumstances snuffed them out?
Despite the sunny day outside – or perhaps because of it – the curtains in Claire’s mother’s apartment were tightly closed. The only light in the room came from the TV. Although Jean had recently reduced the number of TVs she owned, there was still one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, and one in the living room. On the big screen, a chef was trying to teach a talk show host as well as an actress Claire had never heard of how to make gazpacho. Her mother would never make gazpacho in a million years, but still Jean kept her eyes on the TV while she talked to Claire.
“Do you want to go garage-saleing with me tomorrow, Claire?”
“Garage-saleing?” Claire could her the tightness in her own voice. Jean’s trucker boyfriend, Zed, had broken up with her two weeks before, leaving Jean for a female pump jockey who had presumably done more than gas up his big rig. Claire knew from painful experience that left to her own devices, Jean sometimes reverted to bad habits. Her worst vice was shopping. Her mother had met Zed in a Shopaholics Anonymous 12-step program while trying to overcome her addiction to QualProd, a TV shopping network. Jean’s habit had left her with a maxed-out credit card and so many useless knick-knacks that she could hold her own garage sale every day for a year and still not run out of stuff.
“Mom, are you sure that’s such a good idea? Have you talked to your support group about this?”
“Honey, I only allow myself to bring five dollars in quarters.” Jean still spoke to the TV. “How much trouble could I get into? Look, it will be fun.”
Claire was willing to bet that her mom also brought along her checkbook. If she didn’t nip this in the bud, on Saturday, Jean would be hauling home flaking brass plated headboards, jade-green life-size ceramic jaguars, and paint-by-number numbers done on black velvet.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Claire said quickly. “Charlie and I are going to Riverwalk tomorrow to see an old friend of hers. I’ve heard you talking before about how nice that place looks. It’s an open house – why don’t you come with us and see?”
Jean was only sixteen years older than Claire, so she was really too young - as well as far too poor – to be a prime candidate for Riverwalk. At the same time, she had always been fascinated by a place she viewed as a sort of country club, the exclusive privilege of the rich.
Claire could tell Jean was tempted. “Come on,” Claire wheedled. “They’ve got a band, refreshments - and door prizes.” She knew this last idea would be the clincher, and it was.
“You’re going to have to help me figure out what to wear.” Jean finally looked away from the TV and up at Claire. In the half-light, the concealer she had smeared around her deep-set eyes glowed, making Jean resemble some sort of reverse raccoon. “I don’t want to look like the local yokel.”
Chapter 9
Ritchie was asleep behind the stacks of recycled tires outside the Velvet Wrench when a kick to the gut woke him. Reacting as automatically as a pill bug, he rolled into a ball. But the kicks kept coming, finding all his vulnerable places. When he tried to cover the back of his neck with his right hand, he felt one of his fingers snap. Ignoring the pain of his broken finger, Ritchie got on his hands and knees and tried to scuttle behind his shopping cart.
The lights of a passing car picked out something shiny in one of the kid’s hands. A gun. Pointed at him. Ritchie froze. He was crouched on his haunches, and now he raised his hands unsteadily beside his head.
The biggest kid swaggered up to him, the gun held confidently in his hand. He stood so close to Ritchie that Ritchie could no longer see the gun. Afraid to move his head, he rolled his eyes, trying to figure out where the gun was. He stilled when he felt its cold kiss on his left temple.
Two more kids stood behind the one with the gun. Young, all three of them, 17, 18, 19 tops. In contrast to their buddy with the gun, the other two looked like they might be scared. One had dark stubble across his head and was holding a can of spray paint. The other one, with his blond hair shorn close to his skull, wasn’t even looking at Ritchie, but up at the blind white eye of the moon.
“You know what you are, man?” the kid with the gun asked. Tattoos crawled past the ends of his sleeves. Ritchie might have been able to tell him some things – homeless, HIV positive, an alcoholic, finally off the needle, just getting by, old enough to be this kid’s father – but the kid didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re a disgrace to your race! A white man like you shouldn’t be begging on the streets.”
Ritchie closed his eyes, waiting for the bullet. But what came next was a flurry of kicks, from all sides. He fell over, now as helpless as a beetle on its back. All three of them kicking him, hard kicks, too, none of them holding back. As if their lives depending on kicking them. Right before he lost consciousness, Ritchie saw the look in the eyes of the kid with the gun and thought that maybe they did.
Chapter 10
IKDUNOT
Jean had had to be dissuaded from buying tennis whites, although Claire could tell from her mother’s streaky orange legs as she walked out to the car that she had applied self tanner the night before with a too-liberal hand. Jean had also managed to come up with a pair of white Keds and footie socks with pink pom-poms. Three ‘gold’ necklaces – mementos from her dalliance with Qualprod - nestled on what Jean liked to refer to as “her girls,” displayed by the U-shaped neckline on her too-tight short black dress. Jean was the kind of woman who had skinny arms and legs and a squarish middle. Her build was so different from Claire’s that it was easy to guess that Claire’s father, who had disappeared long before Claire made an appearance, must have been tall, thin and red-haired.
“This is so exciting!” Jean said, after she had settled down into the Mazda 323’s passenger seat. She flipped down the visor, but because Claire’s little car had been made as cheaply as possible, it lacked a vanity mirror. (There were al
so no intermittent wipers nor a sideview mirror on the passenger’s side. A recessed space in the dash was helpfully labeled “quartz,” although it was empty of a clock.) Charlie smiled at Jean from the cramped back seat, which was tolerable only for children and really short adults.
Without the reassurance of a mirror, Claire’s mother was forced to rely on Claire and Charlie. “Is my lipstick on straight? Do I look okay?”
“You look fine, Mom,” Claire said, while Charlie nodded in agreement. In truth, Jean and Tammy Faye Baker both subscribed to the same makeup philosophy. But according to her own standards, Jean, with her eyelashes mascaraed into five or six clumps, her iridescent shadow glittering, and her lips as shiny as a brand new cherry-red convertible, did look fine.
After her car had been waved through the gate by a uniformed security guard, Claire discovered that finding a place to park at Riverwalk’s open house was like finding a parking space at Washington Square Mall two days before Christmas. As they made ever-widening circles, they passed middle-aged children walking side by side with their elderly parents, or pushing them around the tidy grounds in wheelchairs. For residents, golf carts seemed to be the preferred method of zipping over the concrete paths from one part of the sprawling compound to another.