SIX
“TO DON’T TELL ME I don’t know about prison,” Finn whispered after the story had been told. “I was in prison when I walked through the doors of the Stockley School, and I was still in prison when I left.”
“But it’s over with now,” I said.
“It’s never over with,” Finn told me. “Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I don’t know where I am; I expect to find myself in the metal bed I had at Stockley. How can you say it’s over when my heart never worked right again?”
Finn had been so alone that last day when he stood on the lawn on the Stockley School. If Herman had turned and run to him, what would Finn have done? What would he do now if I touched his face, if I held my arms around him and let him know he was not the only one to ever be lonely?
“You’re starting to have feelings,” I said.
“Hah,” Finn said. “Fear.”
“That’s a start,” I insisted.
“So what?” Finn said. “What does it matter? I’m going to jail.” Finn lit another cigarette and inhaled.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Finn said tiredly. “Today. I’m going today.”
“I don’t want you to go,” I said.
“You?” Finn laughed. “How do you think I feel?”
“I’ll have to tell my supervisor about your case,” I said.
“Yes,” Finn agreed.
“I’ll have to say I found out about your criminal activities today,” I explained. “Otherwise I could be fired for withholding evidence.”
“Of course. I never wanted to get you in trouble.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I agreed.
“I thought of not coming here today, but I didn’t want you to think I had just disappeared.”
We sat so far apart we seemed to be separated from each other by miles, the room filled with blue shades of regret. Finn cleared his throat. “I have to be leaving,” he told me.
“Are you certain it’s today?” I asked.
Finn nodded. “I’d better go,” he said, though he didn’t make a move.
I finally stood and offered him my hand. “Good luck.”
Finn took my hand and held it just long enough to make me shudder when he turned to go. I closed my eyes so that I would not have to watch him walk out the door, and when I opened them again he was already gone.
I canceled my appointments for the rest of the day; a burning in my stomach grew stronger and stronger, it moved along my bloodstream making me dizzy and unable to work. At four that afternoon, when Finn had already turned himself in to the district attorney and I was still alone in my office, Lark opened the door and peered inside.
“Natalie?” she said.
“I’m here,” I told her.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Lark asked. “You’re depressed.”
“No.” I shrugged. “Headache.”
“You know,” she said, coming to sit in the chair where Finn had been, “I’ve been expecting you at EMOTE. I’ve been promising the group for weeks that you’d be there.”
“I’ve been too busy,” I said.
“Really?” Lark said nothing about my empty desk, the telephone which did not ring, my head in my hands. “I hope you’re not too busy to come to the staff meeting. It’s already started.”
I followed Lark through the waiting room where Emily measured coffee into the pot and listened to her portable radio. Soon newscasters would call out Finn’s name on every wavelength, bits and pieces of his story would be told at six and eleven. I walked into the supervisor’s office behind Lark, and then sat in the rear of the room, in the shadows cast by the other social workers. Claude Wilder was at his desk; he concentrated on a navel orange which he peeled carefully. Through the open door I could hear the hum of the radio, the pitch growing higher and higher.
“Claude,” I called from the rear of the room, “I have something I’d like to discuss.”
Lark got up and went out to the waiting room to complain about the volume of the radio; I strained to hear each word that was broadcast.
Claude Wilder chewed his orange calmly; he had no idea who Michael Finn was, he couldn’t possibly tell I was a traitor, a coconspirator after the fact, the sweet burning act. “You’ll just have to wait until the monthly business is over with,” Claude said.
“This is serious,” I said, my voice rising along with the volume of the radio which Lark seemed to have turned even higher. “I’ve discovered one of my clients may have committed a criminal act.”
Claude tossed the last of his orange peel into the wastebasket and wiped his hands. “What client at Outreach hasn’t been responsible for a criminal act?”
“This is different,” I said.
Lark now returned to stand in the doorway. “They’ve caught him,” she crowed. “They may send him here to Outreach for psychological testing. I may get to run a battery of tests.”
“This will have to wait until after the monthly business,” Claude said as he leafed through a pile of financial statements.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Lark cried. “They’ve got the bomber.”
The other workers turned to Lark, but I avoided her eyes. “I know they have,” I said to her.
“How could you know?” Lark said.
“He was my client,” I whispered, too low for anyone to hear.
“Do you want to hear something amazing?” Lark went on from her post at the door. “He’s from Fishers Cove. He lived right here in town. We probably all know him by sight.”
I hoped for courage. “He was my client,” I announced.
Lark turned to me. “What?” she said.
“Michael Finn,” I said. “Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“What are you talking about?” Claude Wilder asked.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” I repeated.
“You didn’t tell us who he was?” Lark said. “You kept him to yourself?”
“You’re supposed to report every unrecorded criminal act to me,” Claude cried. “It’s in our guidelines, it’s in our rules. We have to work with the police department, we depend on county funding.”
“You see, Finn mentioned a criminal act, but he wasn’t comfortable discussing it,” I said.
“Comfortable,” Claude said.
“I didn’t want to push him,” I said.
“Natalie!”
“He made vague references to the explosion, but he didn’t tell me all of it until today.”
“He was here today?” Claude cried.
Lark sat down in a hard-backed chair. “She knew,” Lark said, “and she didn’t tell.”
I shook my head; he had been here, he was here still, in the corners of every room, rising up like incense flavored with cinnamon and the oil of despair.
“All right,” Claude Wilder nodded, crossing his arms in front of his chest, “you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
Once Emily had been called in to jot down everything I said in shorthand and the other workers had all turned to listen, I didn’t know where to begin. I was forced to leave out too much: how Finn’s eyes could grow sharp with fear, how his hopelessness had taken over suddenly, mysteriously, after years of quiet rage. There was no way to explain why his rare smiles were so important to me. Without all of these details, the man I spoke of was not even Finn. How could I tell them that although he had committed a crime, he was innocent; that innocence was as secret as my own heart, and just as impossible to lay down on the bare floor.
After the meeting, Claude insisted that I agree to a conference with Outreach’s board of directors the following week. I got my coat from my office and then walked through the waiting room, where the other social workers had gathered in a corner to discuss my betrayal.
“Thanks,” Lark said to me as I walked out the door.
“Did you want me to betray a professional confidence?” I asked her.
“You just wanted to keep him all to yourself,” Lark said. “That’s all.”
r /> I ran all the way home to Minnie’s, hoping the fresh air would sober me and I would no longer feel such a tremendous loss. There would be bulletins on the radio, headlines in every local paper, and Finn would be alone, behind metal, behind bars, behind the blackest sun of doubt. At least there would be quiet at Minnie’s—no radio, no TV, just hours of sleep.
The door shut behind me; I felt as though I were still running. When I found Minnie waiting for me in the kitchen, my hopes for quiet, for forgetfulness, grew dim.
“I just can’t talk about it,” I told my aunt. “It’s true he’s turned himself in, but I don’t know any of the details, and I’m sick to death of it all.”
“Take a look,” Minnie said, handing me a copy of the Fishers Cove Herald.
“No,” I said. “I can’t bear to.”
“Do you live in this world or don’t you?” Minnie said. “Take a look.”
Finn’s name stretched across the headline; there was a splotchy photo of Reno LeKnight standing on the steps of the police station on East Main. “It’s begun now,” I sighed, handing the paper back to Minnie. “That’s all anyone will be talking about. The bomber,” I whispered. “Michael Finn.”
“Wake up,” Minnie said, refusing the paper. “Look farther down the page.”
“Can’t you understand?” I said to my aunt. “Every time I think of Finn in jail I feel sick.”
“Look,” Minnie said. “Just look.”
I opened the paper. Beneath the photo of LeKnight there was another photograph, a smaller one; in the haze Beaumont cast a faint smile at the camera. I looked up at Minnie.
“That’s right,” Minnie nodded.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “Where is he?” I turned my ear to the floor below, listening for the familiar clatter of pots and pans.
“He’s not here,” Minnie said. “He’s also turned himself in as the bomber.”
I sat at the kitchen table and closed my eyes; there was no place that didn’t seem shaky, no one who hadn’t been touched by the purple smoke of the explosion. Beaumont and Finn were both in jail for crimes never committed anywhere but in their own hearts, and I could not think of one thing I could do to help. So when Minnie set a cup of peppermint tea with honey in front of me I didn’t wave her away, I didn’t bother to remind her peppermint was a flavor I had never cared for. Instead, I let the sweet-smelling steam rise up in my face, and then I drank it all down like medicine, even though I knew, as I tasted the honey on my tongue, that there was no remedy, no homegrown cure for what I had caught, and no hope of recovery.
HALF-LIFE
ONE
ON SUNDAY, WITH BEAUMONT and Finn still in jail, Minnie decided to take matters into her own hands. It was late afternoon when my aunt informed me that we were both about to visit Fishers Cove’s congressman, Pete Bruner. I had not yet bothered to dress; I was on the floor, surrounded by Sunday newspapers, cutting out articles about Michael Finn, wishing that the Herald or the Times had printed at least one photograph.
“Come on,” Minnie said to me. “I’m going to get Beaumont out of jail and I need a witness.”
“Do you really think you’ll get to see the congressman on a Sunday?” I asked. “I have my ways,” Minnie said with a smile. There was only the slightest chance that the congressman would agree to see us, let alone listen to what we had to say, but there was the chance. I dressed and met Minnie out in the driveway, where her faded violet Mustang was parked. We got in and Minnie revved the motor. When we pulled out of the driveway, we headed toward the harbor and then turned west on Route 18. A few miles outside town, Minnie turned off onto Shore Drive; here the old estates still stood, perfect frozen lawns rolled down toward the water.
“I’ve never been here before,” I said.
“Why should you ever have come here?” Minnie asked. She took her hand off the wheel to point toward a huge brick house. “Think of how many people could live in that house; you could fit a whole family into one of the closets.”
When we saw the congressman’s name engraved into a high wrought-iron fence, Minnie turned the Mustang down a secluded dirt driveway. We drove beneath a grove of mimosa and pines, and finally reached a stone house whose turrets reached to the trees. A greenhouse filled with orchids and palms was to the left of the house, and to the right a built-in pool had been circled with paths of slate.
“A public servant,” Minnie said.
We followed the circular driveway and parked beside tall stone vases planted with ivy. At the front door, Minnie pulled a long metal chain which sounded a bell. “Let me do all the talking,” my aunt told me as a young woman in a black uniform opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m here to see the congressman,” Minnie said far too loudly, as if the housekeeper might be deaf. “Right away,” my aunt said.
The housekeeper gazed from the battered Mustang in the driveway to Minnie’s unruly white hair. “Do you ladies have an appointment?” she asked.
“Ladies,” Minnie said to me. She leaned forward confidentially. “How well does he pay you?”
“What?” the young woman said as she drew back.
“I’m curious,” Minnie explained. “When I first came to Fishers Cove I thought of trying to get a job in one of these houses. I’m a terrific cook,” she told the housekeeper. “But they paid their help shit then, and I suppose it’s still the same. What domestic workers need is a union.”
“We do have an appointment with the congressman,” I said in what I hoped sounded like a rational voice. “Perhaps he’s forgotten. He definitely said at three on Sunday, and it’s just about three.”
“Just a minute,” Bruner’s housekeeper said as she closed the front door.
Minnie turned on me. “Why did you lie to her? We don’t have to humiliate ourselves. Bruner works for us. We’re the people.”
“I thought you wanted to get inside?” I said. “What difference does it make now?”
“It makes a difference,” Minnie cried. “We don’t have to bow and scrape.”
“No one bowed,” I said. “Nobody scraped. I simply lied.”
The housekeeper was back in only a few minutes to show us inside. “The congressman will see you,” she said to me, but she kept her distance from Minnie.
We were led into Bruner’s den. The ceiling was two floors high, bay windows lined the wall facing the harbor, there were white velvet couches grouped around a thick red rug. Congressman Bruner stood behind his desk; he bit off the top of a cigar.
“I don’t think you two ladies really have an appointment.” Bruner smiled. “But I love it when my constituents feel they can just drop in on me. That means we’re close, and closeness is what counts in government.”
“This isn’t a social call,” Minnie said, refusing to shake the congressman’s hand and going instead to sit on a velvet couch.
“How do you do?” I said.
“He does very well, can’t you see that?” Minnie said, waving her hand at the furniture and rugs.
“What brings you ladies here today?” the congressman asked.
“You don’t have to be polite with me,” Minnie smiled. “I know you from way back.”
“And do I know you?” Bruner asked.
“Minnie Lansky,” my aunt said proudly.
“Lansky,” the congressman said. “The letters. I remember you.” He nodded glumly. “Your whole family, too.”
“I never had anything to do with those letters,” I explained.
“I’ve had my eye on you for a long time,” Minnie told Bruner. “And now I’ve got you.”
Bruner sat behind his desk. “All right,” he said. “Let’s not spend time fooling around. What do you want?”
Now that the congressman had begun to look more uncomfortable, Minnie relaxed. She took off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat. “This is my niece.” She pointed to me.
“Very nice to meet you,” Bruner said cautiously.
“The
truth is,” Minnie said, “I’m here because I want D. F. Beaumont released from jail.” She paused and smiled. “Today.”
“Oh you do, do you?” Bruner said. He turned to me. “Who is Beaumont?”
“This takes the cake,” Minnie cried. “What kind of politician doesn’t know what’s going on in his own town? Don’t you read the news?”
“Now just a minute,” Bruner snapped. “I’m very busy. I can’t be expected to know everyone in the county by name.”
“That’s what they all say,” Minnie nodded.
“Beaumont has been a boarder at my aunt’s house since nineteen fifty-six,” I explained. “Now it seems he’s been arrested.”
“And he’s sixty-three years old,” Minnie said. “Sixty-three.”
“All right,” Bruner said, reaching for a notepad. “What was he picked up for?”
“Nothing really,” Minnie said. “He says he’s the bomber.”
“The bomber?” Bruner frowned. “That weasel? Does he think he can stop progress?”
“Progress?” Minnie sniffed. “Hah.”
“We’d like him released in our custody,” I said.
“You’d like the bomber released?” Bruner said. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Beaumont wouldn’t know how to make a bomb if you paid him. He was in my house at the time of the explosion, I can vouch for that. The truth is he’s just an old eccentric,” Minnie explained.
“He’s innocent,” I said. “There’s no doubt about it.”
“That may be,” Bruner said. “But there’s nothing I can do, even if I wanted to. And I don’t really think I want to,” he said pointedly.
“All right,” Minnie said. “Fine.” She began to button her coat, she reached for her gloves. “If you can’t help, maybe your brother-in-law can.”
“What brother-in-law?” Bruner said.
Minnie smiled and patted the mohair scarf around her throat. “Let’s go,” she said to me.
“What does Allen have to do with anything?” the congressman asked warily.
“Your brother-in-law’s a big shot, isn’t he?” she said to the congressman. “Although to tell you the truth he does a lousy job running the Mercy Home, I can’t see how he ever got the contract from the county in the first place.” Minnie wrinkled her brow. “Does he have a degree in business administration?”