Read A Case of Need Page 23


  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” he said, coming back with a glass of Scotch.

  “Did you know Wilson took pictures?”

  “I had a suspicion. That boy is ambitious.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And I’m in hot water?”

  “It looks that way,” I said.

  He stared at me for a moment, then said, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “Do you know, for example, that I do abortions?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And Karen?”

  “Twice,” I said.

  He sat back in a Breuer chair, his rounded bulk contrasting with the sharp, linear angles of the chair. “Three times,” he said, “to be precise.”

  “Then you—”

  “No, no,” he said. “The last was in June.”

  “And the first?”

  “When she was fifteen.” He sighed. “You see, I’ve made some mistakes. One of them was trying to look after Karen. Her father was ignoring her, and I was…fond of her. She was a sweet girl. Lost and confused, but sweet. So I did her first abortion, as I have done abortions for other patients from time to time. Does that shock you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. But the trouble was that Karen kept getting pregnant. Three times in three years; for a girl of that age, it wasn’t wise. It was pathological. So I finally decided that she ought to bear the fourth child.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she obviously wanted to be pregnant. She kept doing it. She obviously needed the shame and trouble of an illegitimate child. So I refused the fourth time.”

  “Are you sure she was pregnant?”

  “No,” he said. “And you know why I had my doubts. That vision business. One wonders about primary pituitary dysfunction. I wanted to do tests, but Karen refused. She was only interested in an abortion, and when I wouldn’t give it to her, she became angry.”

  “So you sent her to Dr. Lee.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And he did it?”

  Peter shook his head. “Art is far too clever for that. He would have insisted on tests. Besides, she was four months’ pregnant, or so she claimed. So he wouldn’t have done it.”

  “And you didn’t, either,” I said.

  “No. Do you believe that?”

  “I’d like to.”

  “But you aren’t fully convinced?”

  I shrugged. “You burned your car. It had blood in it.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Karen’s blood.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I lent Karen my car for the weekend. I did not know at the time that she planned an abortion.”

  “You mean she drove your car to the abortion, had it, and drove it back to her home, bleeding? Then she switched to the yellow Porsche?”

  “Not exactly,” Peter said. “But you can get a better explanation from someone else.” He called, “Darling. Come on out.”

  He smiled at me. “Meet my alibi.”

  Mrs. Randall came into the room, looking taut and hard and sexy. She sat in a chair next to Peter.

  “You see,” Peter said, “what a bind I am in.”

  I said, “Sunday night?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “That’s embarrassing,” I said, “but also convenient.”

  “In a sense,” Randall said. He patted her hand and lifted himself heavily out of the chair. “I don’t call it either embarrassing or convenient.”

  “You were with her all night Sunday?”

  He poured himself another Scotch. “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Doing,” Peter said, “what I would rather not explain under oath.”

  “With your brother’s wife?” I said.

  He winked at Mrs. Randall. “Are you my brother’s wife?”

  “I’ve heard a rumor,” she said, “but I don’t believe it.”

  “You see, I’m letting you into some quite private family affairs,” Peter said.

  “They are family affairs, if nothing else.”

  “You’re indignant?”

  “No,” I said. “Fascinated.”

  “Joshua,” Peter said, “is a fool. You know that, of course. So does Wilson. That is why he could be so confident. But unfortunately, Joshua married Evelyn.”

  “Unfortunately,” Evelyn said.

  “Now we are in a bind,” Peter said. “She cannot divorce my brother to marry me. That would be impossible. So we are resigned to our life as it is.”

  “Difficult, I imagine.”

  “Not really,” Peter said, sitting down again with a fresh drink. “Joshua is very dedicated. He often works long into the night. And Evelyn has many clubs and civic functions to attend.”

  “He’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “He already knows,” Peter said.

  I must have reacted, because he said quickly, “Not consciously, of course. J. D. knows nothing consciously. But in the back of his mind, he realizes that he has a young wife whom he neglects and who is finding…satisfaction elsewhere.”

  I turned to Mrs. Randall, “Would you swear Peter was with you Sunday night?”

  “If I had to,” she said.

  “Wilson will make you. He wants a trial.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Why did you accuse Art Lee?”

  She turned away from me and glanced at Peter.

  Peter said, “She was trying to protect me.”

  “Art was the only other abortionist she knew?”

  “Yes,” Evelyn said.

  “He aborted you?”

  “Yes. Last December.”

  “Was it a good abortion?”

  She shifted in the chair. “It worked, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I mean,” I said. “Do you know Art wouldn’t implicate you?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I was confused. I was frightened. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “You were screwing Art.”

  “Yes,” she said, “that was how it turned out.”

  “Well,” I said, “you can clear him now.”

  “How?”

  “Drop the charges.”

  Peter said, “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  “You saw for yourself last night, J. D. is fixed on the battle, once the lines are drawn. He has a surgeon’s view of right and wrong. He sees only black and white, day and night. No gray. No twilight.”

  “No cuckolds.”

  Peter laughed. “He may be a lot like you.”

  Evelyn got up and said, “Lunch will be ready in five minutes. Will you have another drink?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking at Peter, “I’d better.”

  When Evelyn had gone, Peter said, “You see me as a cruel and heartless beast. Actually I’m not. There has been a long chain of errors here, a long list of mistakes. I would like to see it cleaned up—”

  “With no harm done.”

  “More or less. Unfortunately my brother is no help. Once his wife accused Dr. Lee, he took it as gospel truth. He pounced upon it as truth the way a man grasps a life preserver. He will never relent.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “But the central fact remains. I insist—and you can believe it or not—that I did not do the abortion. You are equally certain that Dr. Lee did not do it. Who is left?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Can you find out?”

  “You’re asking me to help you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  OVER LUNCH, I said to Evelyn, “What did Karen really say to you in the car?”

  “She said, ‘That bastard.’ Over and over again. Nothing else.”

  “She never explained?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have any idea who she meant?”

&n
bsp; “No,” Evelyn said, “I didn’t.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Yes,” she said. “She talked about the needle. Something about how she didn’t want the needle, didn’t want it in her, didn’t want it around her. The needle.”

  “Was it a drug?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” Evelyn said.

  “What did you think at the time?”

  “I didn’t think anything,” Evelyn said. “I was driving her to the hospital and she was dying right before my eyes. I was worried that Peter might have done it, even though I didn’t think he had. I was worried that Joshua would find out. I was worried about a lot of things.”

  “But not her?”

  “Yes,” she said, “her, too.”

  THREE

  THE MEAL WAS GOOD. Toward the end, staring at the two of them, I found myself wishing I had not come and did not know about them. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to think about it.

  Afterward, I had coffee with Peter. From the kitchen I heard the sounds of Evelyn washing dishes. It was hard to imagine her washing dishes, but she acted differently around Peter; it was almost possible to like her.

  “I suppose,” Peter said, “that it was unfair to ask you here today.”

  “It was,” I said.

  He sighed and straightened his tie down his massive belly. “I’ve never been in this kind of situation before.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Caught,” he said.

  I thought to myself that he had done it to himself, going in with both eyes wide open. I tried to resent him for that but could not quite manage it.

  “The terrible thing,” he said, “is to think back and wonder what you’d do differently. I keep doing that. And I never find the point I’m looking for, that one crucial point in time where I made the wrong turn in the maze. Getting involved with Ev, I suppose. But I’d do that again. Getting involved with Karen. But I’d do that again, too. Each individual thing was all right. It was the combination….”

  I said, “Get J. D. to drop the charges.”

  He shook his head. “My brother and I,” he said, “have never gotten along. For as long as I can remember. We are different in every way, even physically. We think differently, we act differently. When I was young I used to resent the fact that he was my brother, and I secretly suspected that he was not, that he had been adopted or something. I suppose he thought the same thing.”

  He finished his coffee and rested his chin on his chest. “Ev has tried to convince J. D. to drop charges,” he said. “But he’s firm, and she can’t really—”

  “Think of an excuse?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s too bad she ever named Lee in the first place.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But what’s done is done.”

  He walked with me to the door. I stepped outside into a gray, pale sunlight. As I went down to my car, he said, “If you don’t want to get involved, I’ll understand.”

  I looked back at him. “You knew damned well I’d have no choice.”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “But I was hoping.”

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT INTO MY CAR, I wondered what I would do next. I had no idea, no leads, nothing. Perhaps I could call Zenner again and see if he could remember more of his conversation. Perhaps I could visit Ginnie at Smith, or Angela and Bubbles, and see if they remembered more. But I doubted they would.

  I reached into my pocket for the keys and felt something. I brought it out: a picture of a Negro in a shiny suit. Roman Jones.

  I had forgotten all about Roman. Somewhere along the line he had disappeared in the rush, the stream of faces. I stared at the picture for a long time, trying to read the features, to measure the man. It was impossible; the pose was standard, the cocky look of a silver-suited stud, swaggering, half grinning, half leering. It was a pose for the crowds, and it told me nothing at all.

  I am not good with words, and it has always been surprising to me that my son, Johnny, is. When he is alone, he plays with his toys and makes up word games; he rhymes or tells himself stories. He has very sharp ears and always comes to me for explanations. Once he asked me what an ecdysiast was, pronouncing the word perfectly but carefully, as if it were fragile.

  So I was not really surprised when, as I was minding my own business, he came up and said, “Daddy, what’s an abortionist mean?”

  “Why?”

  “One of the policemen said Uncle Art was an abortionist. Is that bad?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  He leaned against my knee, propping his chin on it. He has large brown eyes; Judith’s eyes.

  “But what’s it mean, Daddy?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, stalling for time.

  “Does it mean a kind of doctor? Like neurologist?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But an abortionist does other things.” I hoisted him up on my knee, feeling the weight of his body. He was getting heavy, growing up. Judith was saying it was time for another.

  “It has to do with babies,” I said.

  “Like obsetrician?”

  “Obstetrician,” I said. “Yes.”

  “He takes the baby out of the mommy?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but it is different. Sometimes the baby isn’t normal. Sometimes it is born so it can’t talk—”

  “Babies can’t talk,” he said, “until later.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But sometimes it is born without arms or legs. Sometimes it is deformed. So a doctor stops the baby and takes it away early.”

  “Before it’s grown up?”

  “Yes, before it’s grown up.”

  “Was I taken away early?”

  “No,” I said and hugged him.

  “Why do some babies have no arms or legs?”

  “It’s an accident,” I said. “A mistake.”

  He stretched out his hand and looked at it, flexing the fingers.

  “Arms are nice,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “But everybody has arms.”

  “Not everybody.”

  “Everybody I know.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but sometimes people are born without them.”

  “How do they play catch without arms?”

  “They can’t.”

  “I don’t like that,” he said. He looked at his hand again, closing his fingers, watching them.

  “Why do you have arms?” he asked.

  “Because.” It was too big a question for me.

  “Because what?”

  “Because inside your body there is a code.”

  “What’s a code?”

  “It’s instructions. It tells the body how it is going to grow.”

  “A code?”

  “It’s like a set of instructions. A plan.”

  “Oh.”

  He thought about this.

  “It’s like your erector set. You look at the pictures and you make what you see. That’s a plan.”

  “Oh.”

  I couldn’t tell if he understood or not. He considered what I had said, then looked at me. “If you take the baby out of the mommy, what happens to it?”

  “It goes away.”

  “Where?”

  “Away,” I said, not wanting to explain further.

  “Oh,” he said. He climbed down off my knee. “Is Uncle Art really an abortionist?”

  “No,” I said. I knew I had to tell him that, otherwise I would get a call from his kindergarten teacher about his uncle the abortionist. But I felt badly, all the same.

  “Good,” he said, “I’m glad.”

  And he walked off.

  JUDITH SAID, “YOU’RE NOT EATING.”

  I pushed my food away. “I’m not very hungry.”

  Judith turned to Johnny and said, “Clean your plate, Johnny.”

  He held the fork in a small, tight fist. “I’m not hungry,” he said and glanced at me.

  “Sure you are,” I said.

  “No,”
he said, “I’m not.”

  Debby, who was barely big enough to see over the table, threw her knife and fork down. “I’m not hungry either,” she said. “The food tastes icky.”

  “I think it tastes very good,” I said and dutifully ate a mouthful. The kids looked at me suspiciously. Especially Debby: at three, she was a very levelheaded little girl.

  “You just want us to eat, Daddy.”

  “I like it,” I said, eating more.

  “You’re pretending.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then why aren’t you smiling?” Debby said.

  Fortunately, Johnny decided at that moment to eat more. He rubbed his stomach. “It’s good,” he said.

  “It is?” Debby said.

  “Yes,” Johnny said, “very good.”

  Debby nibbled. She was very tentative. She took another forkful, and as she moved it to her mouth, she spilled it on her dress. Then, like a normal woman, she got mad at everyone around her. She announced that it was terrible and she didn’t like it; she wouldn’t eat any more. Judith began to call her “Young lady,” a sure sign that Judith was getting mad. Debby backed off while Johnny continued to eat until he held up his plate and showed it to us proudly: clean.

  It was another half-hour before the kids were in bed. I stayed in the kitchen; Judith came back and said, “Coffee?”

  “Yes. I’d better.”

  “Sorry about the kids,” she said. “They’ve had a wearying few days.”

  “We all have.”

  She poured the coffee and sat down across the table from me.

  “I keep thinking,” she said, “about the letters. The ones Betty got.”

  “What about them?”

  “Just what they mean. There are thousands of people out there, all around you, waiting for their chance. Stupid, bigoted, small-minded—”

  “This is a democracy,” I said. “Those people run the country.”

  “Now you’re making fun of me.”

  “No,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

  “Well, it frightens me,” Judith said. She pushed the sugar bowl across the table to me and said, “I think I want to leave Boston. And never come back.”

  “It’s the same everywhere,” I said. “You might as well get used to it.”

  I KILLED TWO HOURS IN MY STUDY, looking over old texts and journal articles. I also did a lot of thinking. I tried to put it together, to match up Karen Randall, and Superhead, and Alan Zenner, and Bubbles and Angela. I tried to make sense of Weston, but in the end nothing made sense.