I watch the young woman’s retreating figure getting smaller, more distant and remote as she pedals through the Yard, between the sprawling brick Pusey and Lamont libraries. I don’t understand why anyone would want to know the future. I wonder if she does, and the conservative answer is probably. But the more likely one is absolutely. Whereas I don’t anymore.
“What did Marino want?” Benton lightly, affectionately touches my back as we follow the sidewalk.
Up ahead on our left is the split-rail paling, and set far back is the brick-and-white-trimmed neo-Georgian building, two stories with a glass-domed conservatory. The four tall chimneys rise proudly and symmetrically from different corners, and ten dormers stand sentry along the slate hipped roof.
THE LONG WALKWAY OF dark red pavers winds through rockery and ornamental shrubs. The sun has dipped behind buildings, and the oppressive air is like a steam room that’s slowly cooling.
Benton has taken off his suit jacket, and it’s neatly folded over his arm as we walk past the bright pink bottlebrushes of summer sweet, purple mountain laurel, and white and blue hydrangeas. None of it stirs in the breathless air, and only a scattering of dark green leaves shows the slightest blush of red. The longer it’s hot and parched, the more unlikely it is that there will be much in the way of fall colors this year.
As Benton and I talk, I do the best I can to answer his questions about Marino’s intentions, explaining he was emphatic that he didn’t want me out walking by myself. But I don’t think it’s his only agenda. I have the distinct impression that Benton doesn’t either.
“At any rate,” I continue telling the story, “he was out and about all the while he was on the phone, basically bird-dogging me while he pretended he wasn’t. Then he drove me the last fifty feet, and that’s where you found me a few minutes ago.”
“The last fifty feet?” Benton repeats.
“It’s what he mandated. I was to get into his car and he would drive me the last fifty feet. Specifically the last damn fifty feet.”
“Obviously what he wanted was to have a private face-to-face conversation with you. Maybe it’s true he didn’t want to talk over the phone. Or he used that as an excuse. Or it could be both,” Benton says as if he knows, and he probably does because it’s not hard for him to profile Pete Marino.
“So tell me why you decided to go for a stroll all by yourself, dressed in a suit and carrying heavy bags?” Benton gets around to that. “Aren’t you the one who warns everybody about the heat index-the way you just did with the woman on the bicycle a minute ago?”
“I suppose that’s why there’s the cliché about practicing what you preach.”
“This isn’t about practicing what you preach. It’s about something else.”
“I thought a walk might do me good,” I reply, and he’s silent. “And besides I had the theater tickets to pick up.”
I explain that I also had gifts to find at the college bookstore, The Coop. The T-shirt, nightgown and handsome coffee-table book may not be the most original presents I’ve ever bought but they were the best I could muster after wandering the aisles. As Benton knows all too well, my sister is difficult to shop for.
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what she likes,” I’m saying, and he isn’t answering.
A popular musical and a peanut butter pie, for example, and Dorothy also will be very pleased with the skimpy Harvard tee that she can wear with her skimpier leggings or jeans. Her Ivy League shirt will be amply filled by her surgically enhanced bosom, and no doubt she’ll inspire many scintillating conversations in the bars of South Beach and Margaritaville.
“And the Cambridge photography book is something she can carry back to Miami as if it was her idea,” I explain as Benton listens without a word, the way he does when he has his own opinion and it’s different from mine. “And that’s exactly how my sister will play it when she shares pictures of Harvard, MIT, the Charles River with Mom. It will be all about Dorothy, which is fine if it means Mom enjoys her gift and feels remembered.”
“It’s not fine,” Benton says as we pass through the deepening shadows of tall boxwood hedges.
“Some things won’t change. It has to be fine.”
“You can’t let Dorothy get to you this way.” His tinted glasses look at me.
“I assume you’ve heard the nine-one-one call.” I change the subject because my sister has wasted quite enough of my time. “Apparently Marino has a copy but he wouldn’t play it for me.”
Benton doesn’t respond, and if he’s listened to the recording he’s not going to tell me. Had he been made aware of it, he might have requested a copy from the Cambridge Police Department, citing that the FBI wants to make sure a government official wasn’t misbehaving or being threatened.
My husband could come up with anything he wants to gain access to the 911 recording, and he’s quite friendly with the commissioner, the mayor, pretty much everybody who’s powerful around here. He didn’t need Marino’s help.
“As you may or may not know, someone complained about me supposedly disturbing the peace.” It sounds even more bizarre as I hear myself describe such a thing to someone whose typical day involves terrorists and serial killers.
I glance at him as we near the proud brick building in the gathering dusk, and his face doesn’t register whatever reaction he might be having.
“I assume Bryce told you about it after Marino confronted him, wanting to know exactly what happened in Harvard Square when he dropped me off,” I add.
“Marino’s feeling insecure about you,” Benton says, and I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question.
“He’s always insecure,” I reply. “But he’s also acting oddly. He was pushy about wanting to drive to the airport. He was overly interested in helping pick up Dorothy.”
“I wonder how he knows she’s coming here. Did you tell him? Because I didn’t.”
“Since we had almost no warning, I really haven’t had a chance to tell hardly anyone,” I reply. “Maybe Lucy mentioned it to him.”
“Or Desi might have. He and Marino have gotten to be real pals,” Benton says, and he can mask his emotions better than anyone I know but he can’t fool me.
I can tell when something hurts him, and the blossoming relationship between Marino and Desi obviously does. I’ve worried it would as Marino spends increasing amounts of time with a mercurial and insatiably inquisitive boy whose genetics are largely unknown to us. We don’t know what to expect. We can’t predict who he might take after.
It should be Janet’s late sister Natalie since it was her egg she’d had frozen when she was only in her twenties. Long before she did anything about it she was researching surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I remember her talking about being a single parent, and in retrospect it seems she had a premonition that her days on earth would be few. And they were. Seven years after Desi was born she would die of pancreatic cancer. It’s such a shame she’s not here to watch him change rapidly like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.
“Look, I get it,” Benton is saying. “I’m not nearly as much fun as Marino. He’s already taken Desi fishing, started teaching him about guns, given him his first sip of beer.”
“Fishing is one thing but I’m not happy if Lucy and Janet think the rest of it is okay.”