My voice had risen as I spoke, and I couldn’t keep an emotional quaver out of it. When I finished, Sharon didn’t say anything, just watched me with her little analytical frown. I ate some of my burger. It tasted like cardboard. I drank some Coke. My hand shook when I set the glass down.
“Anyway,” I said, “Adrian being a shoplifter doesn’t explain the important things. Did you ask Adah Joslyn what was in the backpack, like I asked you to?”
She was still watching me. After a moment I gave it up. “All right,” I said, “I used to shoplift.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“Well, you did get pretty worked up for a moment there. You want to tell me about it?”
“No! Well, maybe.” I took a deep breath, wishing I’d ordered a beer instead of a Coke. “Okay, it started one day when I was trying to buy some nail polish. The clerk was off yapping with one of the other clerks and wouldn’t stop long enough to notice me. So I got pissed, stuck the bottle in my purse, and walked out. Nobody even looked at me. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten away with it. It was like…a high. The best high I’d ever felt. And I told myself the clerk had goaded me into it, that it was a one-shot thing and would never happen again.”
“But of course it did.”
“The second time it was a scarf, and expensive scarf. I had a job interview and I wanted to look nice, but I couldn’t afford to because I didn’t have a job-the old vicious circle. I felt deprived, really angry. So I took the scarf. But what I didn’t count on was the guilt. By the day of the interview, I knew I couldn’t wear the scarf-then or ever. I just tucked it away where I wouldn’t have to see it and be reminded of what I’d done. And where my husband wouldn’t find it.”
“But you kept stealing.”
“Yeah. I never deliberately set out to do it, never left the apartment thinking, today I’m going to rip some store off. But…the high. It was something else.” Even now, years after the fact, I could feel aftershocks from it-my blood coursing faster, my heart pounding a little. “I was careful, I only took little things, always went to different stores. And then, just when I thought I was untouchable, I got caught.”
Sharon nodded. She’d heard it all before, working in retail security.
I looked down at my half-eaten burger. Shame washed over me, negating the memory of the high. My cheeks went hot, just thinking about the day. “God, it was awful! The security guy nabbed me on the sidewalk, made me go back inside to the store office. What I’d taken was another scarf. I’d stuffed it into a bag with some underpants I’d bought at K-Mart. He dragged it out of there. It was still tagged, and of course I didn’t have the receipt.”
“So he threatened you.”
“Scared the hell out of me. I felt like…you know those old crime movies where they’re sweating a confession out of some guy in a back room? Well, it wasn’t like that at all, he was very careful not to do or say anything that might provoke a lawsuit. But I still felt like some sleazy criminal. Or maybe that was what I thought I deserved to feel like. Anyway, he threatened to call my employer.” I laughed-a hollow sound. “That would really have torn it. My employer was another security firm.”
“So what’d you do-sign a confession?”
“Yes, and promised never to set foot in their store again. And I’ve never stolen so much as a stick of gum since. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to take the free matchbooks from restaurants!”
Sharon grinned. “I bet one of the most embarrassing things about that whole period in your life is that you were such a textbook case.”
I nodded. “Woman’s crime. Nonsensical theft. Doesn’t stem from a real need, but from anger or the idea you’re somehow entitled to things you can’t afford. You get addicted to the high, but you’re also overcome by the guilt, so you can’t get any benefit from what you’ve stolen. Pretty stupid, huh?”
“We’re all pretty stupid at times-shoplifters haven’t cornered the market on that.”
“Yeah. You know what scared me the most, thought? Even more than the security guy calling my employer? That Doug would find out. For a perpetual student who leaned on me for everything from financial support to typing his papers, he could be miserably self-righteous and superior. He’d never even have tried to understand that I was stealing to make up for everything that was missing in our marriage. And he’d never have let me forget what I did.”
“Well, both the stealing and Doug are history now.” Sharon patted my hand. “Don’t look so hangdog.”
“Can’t help it. I feel like such a…I bet you’ve never done anything like that in your life.”
Sharon’s eyes clouded and her mouth pulled down. All she said was, “Don’t count on it.” Then she scrubbed her fingers briskly on her napkin and pushed her empty plate away. “Finish your lunch,” she ordered. “And let’s get back to your case. What you’re telling me is that Adrian was shoplifting and saw a way to break free of it?”
“A way to break free of something, but I’m not convinced it was the shoplifting. It may have been related, but then again, it may not.” My head was starting to ache. There was too damn big a gap between the bag of loot under the floor of Adrian’s room in Diamond Heights and the abandoned backpack in the living room of the house on Naples Street. I’d hoped Sharon would provide a connection, but all she’d done was listen to me confess to the absolutely worst sin of my life.
She looked at her watch. “Well, I’ll try to find out what you need to know from Adah later this afternoon, but right now I’ve got to go. I’m giving a deposition at an upscale Montgomery Street law firm at three.” Her nose wrinkled when she said “upscale.”
I waved away the money she held out and told her I’d pick up the tab. It was the least I could do. Even though she hadn’t helped me with the case, she’d helped me with my life. Again.
I’ve always felt like something of a fraud-pretending to be this nice little person when inside I’m seething with all sorts of resentments and peculiarities and secrets. But since I’ve been with All Souls, where people are mostly open and nonjudgmental, I’ve realized I’m not that unusual. Lately the two me’s-the outside nice one and the inside nasty one-are coming closer together. Today’s conversation with Sharon was just one more step in the right direction.
VII
I’d come up with a plan, an experiment I wanted to try out, and while it probably wouldn’t work, I had a lot of time on my hands and nothing to lose. So after I finished my burger, I went back up the hill to our annex and got Lillian Chu to call her son Tom at McAteer and command his presence at my office as soon as school let out. When Tom arrived, he’d traded his friendly smile for a pout. To make up for my high-handedness, I took him to the kitchen and treated him to a Coke.
Tom perched on one of the counter tops and stared around at the ancient sink and wheezy appliances. “Man,” he said, “this is really retro. I mean, how can you people live like this?”
“We’re products of a more primitive era. You’re probably wondering why I-”
“Pulled this authority shit. Yeah. You didn’t have to get my mom to order me come here.”
“I wasn’t sure you would, otherwise. Besides, the people at McAteer wouldn’t have called you to the phone for me. I’m sorry, but I really need your help. You heard about Kirby, of course.”