Life Sentences Page 21

  Donna’s five “urgent” needs fascinated Gloria. A high-end gas grill, sustainable patio furniture in Brazilian cherry, a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, the new translation of War and Peace, a Gee’s Bend quilt. Gloria couldn’t help Googling the last item, which turned out to be a specific kind of quilt from Alabama. Not to her taste, but undeniably striking. Overall, the portrait Donna presented was quite deliberate. I’m homey, I care about the environment, I’m girly, I’m intellectually engaged, I have exquisite taste. But then, Donna had always been a canny custodian of her own image. Gloria bet that Donna would have those items, too, before spring ended. Donna Howard-Barr was not one to put off her urgent needs. Except, perhaps, that copy of War and Peace.

  And here was Reg yet again, this time in the courthouse elevator on a gray Wednesday morning, holding the hand of an exquisite little girl. Gloria almost didn’t get on, but there were too many people around and she wouldn’t want anyone to think that she was avoiding Reg, because that could be interpreted as a weakness. Not because anyone remembered or even knew their history, but because Gloria believed she was always being scrutinized for chinks in her armor.

  “Take Your Daughter to Work Day?” Gloria asked.

  “That’s April,” the girl said with a child’s literal-minded need to provide accurate information. “Besides, it’s children now, not just daughters. It’s spring break.”

  “The babysitter is ill and Donna has some big luncheon today,” Reg said. “My sister’s coming down to pick her up later this morning.” Then, as an afterthought, “This is Ms. Bustamante, honey. She and Daddy used to work together. Gloria, this is my daughter, Aubrey Barr.”

  “Aubrey Howard Barr,” the girl said. “My mother’s last name is my middle name.”

  Aubrey. Gloria was trying to remember if she had known that Reg and Donna had a daughter. She must have, but seeing the child produced an almost visceral reaction. You son of a bitch, she thought, knowing she was being unfair, even irrational. A daughter, about eight or so. Pretty, of course. Reg and Donna couldn’t have anything but a pretty child. Poised, like her mother, but with the spark of Reg’s personality. A daddy’s girl, her hand tucked in his, dressed in a contemporary version of fifties finery—wool coat, hat, pink tights, and postmodern Mary Janes, the toes almost whimsically bulbous. What was it like for a womanizer such as Reg to have a daughter? Gloria thought it rather neat, the perfect O. Henry ending for a man whose conquests were working their way down, chronologically, according to the rumors she had heard. In a year or two, he would be sleeping with his friends’ daughters. The actual daughters, toothsome interns, although probably not at his own firm. Reg had some boundaries. How horrible it must be for a man like Reg to have a daughter. He would be almost sixty when she made her way into the world, his power fading. He would watch impotently from the sidelines, his knowledge of men a grim prophecy from which he could never protect his daughter.

  Good.

  “Don’t you look like the Cheesy Cat,” he said. Gloria wasn’t aware that she was smiling.

  “Cheshire Cat,” his daughter corrected primly. She was quite a stickler for accuracy, little Aubrey Howard Barr. Only in this case, her father hadn’t misspoken.

  Gloria got off at the next floor, although it wasn’t hers. She had forgotten the private joke of Cheesy Cat. What had been its origins? Something to do with the horrible vending machines in the old Howard & Howard headquarters, the off-brand snacks they downed late at night. They called them Cheesy Cat Chips because they tasted more like pet food than something humans were supposed to eat. Gloria was the one who always had change or crisp dollars—this was back in the day when vending machines were finicky about the bills they took—while Reg or Colton Jensen, another associate, volunteered to make the run down three floors. The chips turned their fingers orange, and they had to keep a roll of paper towels nearby, lest they leave orange thumb-prints on documents. “The curse of the Cheesy Cat,” they would joke.

  They had a lot of jokes. Reg and Col had performed their own version of “You Can Call Me Al,” changing the lyrics to reflect the endlessly mundane things they were asked to do. You can get me coffee. You can do my photocopying. There was an apple-shaped partner who was forever hitching his pants up over nonexistent hips, punctuating his fatuous pronouncements and incessant instructions. One night, Reg had taken to imitating him, while Col—Jesus, Col, dead from AIDS almost seventeen years now, one of the early casualties—shook a bag of chips behind him. They had laughed until they had collapsed in tears. “You see, Gloria”—pants hitch, the sound of rattling chips—“the rule of habeas corpus dictates”—pants hitch, rattling chips—“that the law may not be an ass, but the lawyer most certainly is.”

  Perhaps one had to be there. Gloria had been there, and she could no longer remember why it was funny, just that it was. They were ambitious, they were giddy, they were never going to be like the people for whom they worked. And then, one day, they were exactly like them. How did that happen?

  People understood mourning a lost love. If she’d had romantic feelings toward Reg, even if it were one-sided, people would sympathize with the kick she felt when reminded of their former closeness. But the intimacy lost with a friend—that could be just as intense. He had been young then, and if she, in her thirties, couldn’t quite claim that, she was his peer in the office hierarchy, his running buddy in a running conversation about the weaknesses and peccadilloes of their bosses. She had thought such conversations were intended to do nothing more than pass the long evenings. “For amusement purposes only,” as the video poker machines in Baltimore bars said. But it was a lie on the machines and it turned out to be a lie in their relationship as well. Gloria excelled at the law, but Reg understood the culture of law firms in general and Howard & Howard in particular. That made all the difference.

  To be fair, he hadn’t pushed her out, not at all, but he also hadn’t followed her. Reg wasn’t the type to jump out a window just because Gloria said the building was on fire. Reg couldn’t see the smoke, much less the flames. Besides, she never told him why exactly she quit so abruptly. But he had to suspect it was something dire, something big. She wondered if he had ever figured it out. She wanted to believe Reg wouldn’t tolerate it if he knew. One could argue that he was the only winner in this sad game, getting the partnership and the boss’s daughter. Ignorance was bliss. Did Reg deserve that bliss?

  TISHA WAS SO DELIGHTED to have her niece for an afternoon that she didn’t bother to call Reg on lying to her about why he needed a babysitter. Not that she was sure what the lie was, only that he was misrepresenting the situation for some reason. Could have been as simple as guilt—Reg and Donna should have been able to roll a little better with life’s contingencies, such as their child care being shot straight to hell. Tisha certainly never asked Donna to bail her out when her kids were small. Or it could have been—but she didn’t want to think about what else it could have been. She had her suspicions about her brother, but she had never confronted them even in her own mind, much less tried to bring him to task. He loved Donna, she was sure of that. In fact, she often thought he loved her a little too much, tilting over into worship. Then why did—but she could not go there. Not about her brother. She knew, she suspected, but when the idea threatened to become too concrete, she all but stuck her fingers in her ears and closed her eyes. La-la-la-la, I can’t hear you.

  Ushered into her brother’s office to fetch Aubrey—feeling, as she always did here, terribly suburban, such a mom, a kind not usually seen in the overdone offices of Howard, Howard & Barr—she asked only, “What’s up?”

  “Not much. Got everything under control.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing, Tisha. I’m grateful to you for bailing me out, is all.”

  “It’s a favor you’re doing me. Aubrey and I are going to have fun, aren’t we, baby?”

  The girl beamed. It was going to be fun to spend an afternoon with an eight-year-old.
Tisha’s kids were generally sweet, for teenagers, but her company was not their first choice, not anymore. She tried to remember what eight felt like, from the inside. She had been eight when she met Cassandra, that first day of school back at Dickey Hill. Why had she grabbed that bony white elbow and invited that strange girl to join the threesome of her, Donna, and Fatima? The world knew Cassandra’s version, and Tisha was glad for that. She came off better in Cassandra’s version. But it wasn’t how she remembered it.

  Fact was, there was a girl from their old school whom she didn’t like and Tisha had to put someone else in that fourth desk, fast, or she would have joined them. The first day was like a game of musical chairs; there were enough seats, but not enough good seats, and as the minutes ticked down, a few kids were milling about, looking not only for a place but for a place where they would be welcome. Tisha had wedged Cassandra into their group to avoid—she could call up the face but not the name, see the girl in her blue plaid dress, her processed hair ragged at the ends, a home-done job. Even at eight, Tisha had a big-picture view of things, made lightning-quick decisions with a surprising ruthlessness. You’re in, you’re out. Aubrey, like her mother back then, seemed innocent of such motives and judgments.

  Or—again like her mother—perhaps she trusted there would always be someone like Tisha to do her dirty work.

  “Can we go to Frank’s Diner?” Aubrey whispered in the elevator, glancing anxiously at the ceiling, almost as if she thought Howard, Howard & Barr was keeping watch on her, reporting back to her mother.

  “We sure can.”

  “And can I have French fries with gravy and a slice of cake?”

  “You can have French fries with gravy and a slice of cake and a milk shake.”

  “Can I have French fries with gravy and a slice of cake and a milk shake and…onion rings?”

  “You can have French fries with gravy and a slice of cake and a milk shake and onion rings.”

  It was their version of the old memory game Johnny Has a Ball of String in His Pocket. Tisha always let Aubrey win. Although, come to think of it, there was less and less letting as of late. Aubrey’s memory, required to hold nothing more than eight years of life, was sharp, while Tisha’s was increasingly mushy. She felt like an old PC going up against one of those new Macs with the Intel chip. Everything under control—why did she want to attach so much meaning to a simple phrase? What was Reg up to?

  “You lose,” Aubrey said with a happy squeal of a giggle after their menu had grown to almost a dozen items. “You forgot the milk shake.”

  “Brings the boys to the yard,” Tisha muttered.

  If her own children had been with her, they would have mocked her for the outdated reference, hooted at her for thinking she could keep up with pop culture and by doing so keep up with them. Tisha did listen occasionally to the music her children favored, if only to monitor the kind of ideas they were absorbing in spite of themselves. But Aubrey, who didn’t even understand the double entendre of Kelis’s milk shake, put her hand in her aunt’s and skipped down Baltimore Street. Had Tisha ever been this happy, at any age? She must have been. The problem was that such simple, ordinary bliss seldom formed memories. It was too smooth and silken to adhere. It was the bad stuff, ragged and uneven, that caught, like all those plastic grocery bags stuck in the trees of Baltimore. It was—Babette, that was her name, Babette, standing in the middle of Mrs. Klein’s third-grade class, wounded and puzzled by Tisha’s snub.

  CASSANDRA WAS SPENT. ALTHOUGH SHE seldom napped, she found herself drifting off as Reg showered. He would need to stay in there a long time to rid himself of the scent of sex, of her. She wished they could go out now, have an early dinner, but she knew the rules, how things worked. Just on the edge of wakefulness, she relived the last two hours. Thinking about it was almost as good as doing it had been. She understood brain chemistry, recognized that this kind of passion was impossible to sustain, but, boy, was it fun while it lasted. It was strange, how little they talked, but what was there to discuss? They knew each other’s pasts and the present wasn’t a topic on which either wanted to dwell. She blinked her eyes, broke back into full consciousness, glanced at the clock. Had an hour really passed? The water was off, the apartment quiet. Would he have left without saying good-bye? She put on a robe and walked into the living room, where Reg was at her laptop, wearing only a towel.

  “Just checking my e-mail,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “I thought you had a BlackBerry.” He had, in fact, placed it on the nightstand while they were having sex, and it had vibrated intermittently throughout.

  “They’re great for reading e-mails, but I’m too fumble-fingered if I have to reply more than yes or no. However, it looks as if the office survived without me.”

  She straddled him, blocking his view of the computer, rubbing his neck.

  “Careful,” he said. “You’ll make me late.”

  She could indeed, and it was tempting. But it was enough, for now, to know she had that power. She wouldn’t have it for long. That was how these things worked, although this didn’t feel like anything she had known before. Still, it was important not to take advantage, not to make trouble for him. And important to show him that she had the self-control to break away as needed. She gave him a long, fluttering kiss, running an index finger along his earlobe—then stopped before it went too far.

  “You’re right,” she said. “You have to go.”

  “You’re wicked,” he said, but she heard nothing but admiration in his voice.

  THE CHARLES BENTON BUILDING, named for the longtime city and state budget adviser, was an incongruous presence on the stretch of strip clubs known as the Block. Local rumor held that Benton had insisted it be built there in hopes of destroying the Block. The more extreme version claimed his wife had once worked as a dancer at one of the clubs before embracing a life of Christian piety. Gloria, aware of the chronically inaccurate gossip about her life, had trouble putting stock in any of this, but it was interesting, strolling past the famed Two O’clock Club to go look up campaign finance reports.

  “You can get those online,” the clerk said. She was young and bored, so young that it hadn’t occurred to her that her job might be less boring if she actually welcomed opportunities to do it. That was one of the lessons of youth: It wasn’t work that was boring but the lack of it.

  “I know,” Gloria said. She didn’t, in fact, but she had ventured down here and hated to think of it as a wasted trip. “But that’s only for the more recent reports, right? I’m looking for a report from 1979.”

  “Nineteen seventy-nine?” She made the date sound as distant as 1776 or 1492.

  “Yes—but also—” Gloria did the math in her head. The city races were in odd years, but the state election calendar ran on an even schedule, with the senate up for reelection every four years. “Nineteen ninety. And 1998.”

  “That might take a while,” the clerk said. “I might not be able to get it by the end of the day.” She pointed to the clock, which showed it was almost four.

  “I’ll have someone from my office pick them up tomorrow.” She paused. “It will be someone from the office of Gloria Bustamante, okay? Picking up the campaign records for Julius Howard. Gloria Bustamante’s office, state senator Julius Howard’s finance reports, for the senate race, but also for city council president.”

  She hit both names hard, hoping the girl was a gossip or that there was someone lurking nearby who would find this interesting. Let another rumor fly out of the Benton Building, she decided. Let them know that she was snooping, not that she had any idea what she might find. The fact of Reg’s daughter had hit her hard. She had a hunch—nothing more—that someone else would be even more shocked to see this miniature version of Donna Barr. Excuse her—Donna Howard-Barr.

  CHAPTER

  26

  CALLIE SET OUT HER SUPPLIES as she did every Thursday morning now. Butter to soften, eggs to reach room temperature. Flour and sugar were a
lways at the ready, in canisters labeled as such. She loved those canisters, which she had purchased from QVC with her first-ever credit card. She loved how it had felt, going into Lowe’s when she first moved over to the shore and buying the things she needed as she needed them. Back then, she hadn’t envisioned how important flour and sugar would become to her, and she might choose differently if she were outfitting her kitchen today. The porcelain containers were pretty but heavy, and she lived in fear of dropping one of the lids and breaking it. Yes, she could afford to buy a new set, or superglue the broken lid, if such a thing were to come to pass. But she never got over that fear of breaking things. You clumsy child, her mother would say to her, as if Callie were cursed, possessed by a demon that made her drop and spill and trip. You stupid child. Now her mother’s hands shook and she often dribbled food and liquid down her own front, pretending all the while she didn’t notice. If Callie said, “Mama, there’s a spot of juice on your robe,” Myra Tippet replied, “No, there’s not.”

  Callie hated lying. She knew most people would find that funny, given that it was the general perception of things that she was the biggest liar that ever was, and worse. But she did not believe silence was a lie, on a par with false words. Long before she had taken refuge in silence, she had made this distinction. Her mother had been adamant that Callie never lie, not to her. Callie didn’t, but she refused at times to give her mother the evidence she required in order to punish her. Who ate the peanut butter? Who left the towel on the floor? Her mother would shake her and shake her and shake her, but Callie wouldn’t even cry. As long as she didn’t say any words, she wouldn’t be a liar.