She could have. Only, after he left, there was no money coming in. Twenty thousand dollars. That was what had been in their joint checking account in July 1976. Twenty thousand dollars. It had been gone in less than a year.
Besides, at the time, she thought Felix meant prison when he said he was going away. It was not until the night before that she understood he was going somewhere else. She had been putting things away and discovered a pair of cuff links was missing from his drawer. Cuff links she knew well, for she had given them to him for their fifteenth anniversary. Yet there was Felix, in short sleeves-because it was, after all, July. He was packing, she realized. Squirreling things away, getting ready to go. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t want to know. And not because she feared the police and their questions. She could not bear to hear Felix tell her that he was a coward.
Bert left the interrogation room, his broad shoulders slumped. Lord, how she had leaned on him over the years. Lorraine had been kind about it. But then Lorraine pitied Bambi. In the early days, the pity had been a way for her to mitigate all the things she envied about Bambi, and that had been okay. She had pitied Bambi because Felix had other women, then pitied her because he was gone.
Bambi had forgiven Felix his indiscretions. They had been there from the first. The cowardice-that was different. Felix had slept with other women, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. Perhaps the opposite. Sleeping with other women was the only wedge he had against his love for her. Sure, she knew that sounded like a rationalization, but some rationalizations were true. No, it was in his flight that Felix had betrayed her and their children.
The detectives returned.
“For the record-you are speaking to us without a lawyer at your own behest,” the girl intoned into the tape recorder.
“Yes, for the record I am.”
“Okay,” said the sad-eyed detective. “You contacted Julie Saxony-when? How?”
She looked at him long and hard. “I sent my daughter Rachel. On my behalf. She went to speak to her the week before. I’m not sure of the exact date.”
“You sent your daughter Rachel, she asked Julie for money, and a week later, Julie brings you money? On the Fourth of July?”
“Yes.”
“And how did she get the money? Banks would have been closed. And, as you must know, Julie Saxony’s financial life was pored over. There’s no record of any big cash transaction in the weeks before she disappeared.”
“I haven’t a clue. All I know is I got the money I needed.”
“We should probably speak to your daughter.”
“My daughter’s at the hospital.”
It was the first sign of genuine emotion in the female detective’s face. So she was a mother. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not major. Her child needs cleft palate surgery. She’s adopted, from China. It’s pretty common now. For the children to need this surgery. If you don’t agree to a special-needs child, it’s much harder to adopt from there.” She found her speech speeding up. She was chattering, as if she was nervous. Why was she nervous? She had already done the hardest part. “It didn’t used to be that way. Foreign adoption has changed so much. And Rachel and Joshua, because they live in the city-well, it seemed unlikely that they would get a child domestically, in the city, and they were over forty, which makes them too old for most U.S. adoptions, and then Guatemala closed and Vietnam had problems and-well, China was it.”
Nattering, nattering, nattering. Gathering her thoughts even as she appeared to be fraying. Maybe she shouldn’t have sent Bert away. What were her rights now? Did she get another phone call, could she demand a new lawyer? How could she get word to Rachel?
“Look, I said I did it. Can’t you just arrest me? The sooner you do that, the sooner I can get before a judge, see if bond can be arranged. My granddaughter had surgery today. I can’t possibly spend the night here.”
But in the end, that’s exactly what she did. They took her into custody and drove her out to Towson, locked her up in detention there and told her to be grateful for that. Granted a phone call, she swallowed her pride and called the Gelmans’ home, praying Lorraine would answer.
For the first time in a long time, a prayer was answered.
“Bambi-Bert told me what’s going on. He’s beside himself. What are you thinking? How can you turn your back on his help when he only wants what’s best for you? Why-”
“Lorraine, you have to get to Rachel. Tonight. I think I bought her some time, but the police will come for her tomorrow. Whatever happens, she has to insist she was not at my house on July third, or that she didn’t see anyone there.”
“I don’t-”
“Lorraine, she’s my daughter. She finally has the only thing she ever wanted, her own child. Her life is worth more than mine, in so many ways. I know that I can’t say such things to Bert. He can’t allow me to lie, which is why I’ve had to let him go. But you’re my friend and a mother, not a lawyer. You have to let me do this. Whatever Rachel did-she did it for me. Now I have to do this for her.”
July 3, 1986
Her room was as she had left it, a scant six years ago. It was not so much tribute as inertia. Her mother was fighting a running battle with Michelle, who wanted to claim one of her sisters’ rooms, then begin a costly redecoration. Easier to keep everything as it was.
The thing that bothered Rachel, however, was that she felt younger and stupider than the girl who had left this room to attend Brown. That girl had been skeptical of her high school classmate, Marc Singer. That girl had high intellectual standards. She read serious books and aspired to be a poet. The “woman” who had replaced her was now spending her afternoons watching All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital. She hadn’t washed her hair or taken a shower since Monday. She knew she was being foolish, that she shouldn’t be depressed about the decisions she had made. She was right to give up on Marc, to erase everything of their life together. She deserved better. He was never going to be faithful to anyone. She couldn’t live her mother’s life.
But that thought, which occurred to her as she stared into the refrigerator, despite knowing its contents by heart by now, seemed treasonous. Her mother was such a good person. Who was Rachel to feel superior to her, to demand something better? It was her mother who deserved better, and now Rachel was going to give it to her. Wipe out her debt once and for all.
She found a jar of olives and took it back to the sofa. If she had gone to the shore with her mother and Michelle, there would be crabs and Silver Queen corn and gorgeous tomatoes, hothouse at this time of year, but still good. The Gelmans entertained so well. A little showily, but that was okay. Her father, too, had been extravagant when it came to parties. He believed there was no point in having money if people didn’t know you had it.
The corollary, as best Rachel could work out, was that people should never know that you didn’t have money. That was how her mother had lived for the past ten years, and that was what had brought her to near ruin this summer. But Rachel had saved her. At some cost to herself, but she believed it wouldn’t feel that way in one, two years. She would meet the right man, they would have a family. She was going to get a do-over. Marc was the wrong person for her. He wasn’t a good person. Her father broke the law, made his money from the poor and weak, cheated on her mother. Yet, somehow, he was a good person. Marc sold commercial real estate, was at his parents’ home every Friday for Shabbat dinner, cheated on his wife-then lied about it. Then acted as if she were the crazy one when she confronted him. That was evil. That was cowardice.