Mom’s face crumbled. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Did he work for Cozone?”
“Please stop.”
“Is that how he paid for the apartment in New York City?”
“What? No, no. He got a good deal, remember? He saved that man’s life.”
“What man?”
“What do you mean, what man?”
“What man? What was his name?”
“How am I supposed to remember?”
“Because I know Dad did a lot of good work as a cop, but I don’t remember him saving any real estate magnate’s life, do you? Why did we just accept that story? Why didn’t we ask him?”
“Ask him,” Mom repeated. She retied her apron string, pulling the ends a little too hard. “You mean, like you are now? Like an interrogation? Like your father was some kind of liar? You’d do that to that man—to your father? You’d ask him questions and call him a liar in his own home?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Kat said, but her voice was weak.
“Well, what do you mean? Everyone exaggerates, Kat. You know that. Especially men. So maybe your father didn’t save the man’s life. Maybe he only, I don’t know, caught a burglar who robbed him or helped him with a parking ticket. I don’t know. Your father said he saved his life. I didn’t question his word. Tessie’s husband, Ed? He used to limp, remember? He told everyone it was from shrapnel in the war. But he was clerical because of his eyesight. He hurt his leg falling down subway stairs when he was sixteen. You think Tessie went around calling him a liar every time he told that story?”
Mom brought the sandwich to the table. She started to cut it diagonally—her brother had preferred it that way—but Kat, ever the contrarian, had insisted sandwiches be cut to make two rectangles. Mom, again out of habit, remembered, angled the knife, cut it in two perfect halves.
“You’ve never been married,” Mom said softly. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“We all have our demons. But men? They have them much worse. The world tells them that they are the leaders and great and macho and have to be big and brave and make a lot of money and lead these glamorous lives. But they don’t, do they? Look at the men in this neighborhood. They all worked too many hours. They came home to noisy, demanding homes. Something was always broken they needed to fix. They were always behind on the house payments. Women, we get it. Life is about a certain kind of drudgery. We are taught not to hope or want too much. Men? They never get that.”
“Where did he go, Mom?”
She closed her eyes. “Eat your sandwich.”
“Was he doing jobs for Cozone?”
“Maybe.” Then: “I don’t think so.”
Kat pulled the chair out for her mother to sit. Mom sat as though someone had cut her knees out from beneath her.
“What was he doing?” Kat asked.
“You remember Gary?”
“Flo’s husband.”
“Right. He used to go to the track, remember? He kept losing everything they had. Flo would cry for hours. Your uncle Tommy, he drank too much. He was home every night, but rarely before eleven o’clock. He’d stop at the pub for a quick one and then it would be hours later. The men. They all needed something like that. Some drank. Some gambled. Some whored. Some, the lucky ones, found the church, though they could kill you with their sanctimonious baloney. But the point is, with men, real life was never enough. You know what my dad, your grandfather, used to say?”
Kat shook her head.
“‘If a man had enough to eat, he’d want to grow a second mouth.’ He also had a dirty way of saying it, but I won’t repeat it here.”
Kat reached out and took her mother’s hand. She tried to remember the last time she had done that—reached out to her very own mother—but no memory came to her.
“What about Dad?”
“You always thought it was your father who wanted you to get out of this life. But it was me. I was the one who didn’t want you stuck here.”
“You hated it that much?”
“No. It was my life. It’s all I have.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mom squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Don’t make me face what I don’t need to face,” she said. “It’s over. You can’t change the past. But see, you can shape it with your memories. I get to choose which ones I keep, not you.”
Kat tried to keep her voice gentle. “Mom?”
“What?”
“Those don’t sound like memories. They sound like illusions.”
“What’s the difference?” Mom smiled. “You lived here too, Kat.”
Kat sat back in her chair. “What?”
“You were a child, sure, but a smart child, very mature for your age. You loved your father unconditionally, yet you saw him vanish. You saw through my fake smiles and all that sweetness when he came home. But you looked away, didn’t you?”
“I’m not looking away now.” Kat reached out her hand again. “Please tell me where he went.”
“The truth? I don’t know.”
“But you know more than you’re telling me.”
“He was a good man, your father. He provided for you and your brothers. He taught you right from wrong. He worked long hours and made sure that you all got a college education.”
“Did you love him?” she asked.
Mom started busying herself, rinsing a cup in the sink, putting the mayo back in the fridge. “Oh, he was so handsome when we met, your father. Every girl wanted to date him.” There was a faraway look in her eye. “I wasn’t so bad back then either.”
“You’re not so bad now.”
Mom ignored the remark.
“Did you love him?”
“The best I could,” she said, blinking until the faraway look was no more. “But it’s never enough.”
Chapter 25
Kat started back toward the 7 train. School must have been letting out. Kids with giant backpacks shuffled by, their eyes down, most playing with their smartphones. Two girls from St. Francis Prep walked by in their cheerleader uniforms. To the shock of all who knew her, Kat had tried out for cheerleading her sophomore year. Their main cheer was the old standby: “We’re St. Francis Prep, we don’t come any prouder, and if you can’t hear us, we’ll shout it a little louder.” Then you repeat the cheer louder and then louder still until it all felt a tad inane. The other cheer—she smiled at the memory—was when your team made a mistake. They’d do a quick clap while shouting, “That’s all right, that’s okay, we’re gonna beat you anyway.” A few years ago, Kat had gone to a game and noticed that they changed the cheer from “we’re gonna beat you” to the more politically correct “we’re gonna win.”
Progress?
Kat was just in front of Tessie’s house when her cell phone rang. It was Chaz.
“You got my text?”
“About the license plate? Yeah, thanks.”
“Dead end?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Because,” Chaz said, “there was one thing about the license plate that bothered me.”
Kat squinted into the sun. “What?”
“The registration was for a black Lincoln Town Car. Not a stretch. Do you know anything about stretches?”
“Not really, no.”
“They are all custom-made. You take a regular car, you strip the interior, and then you literally slice it in half. Then you pull it back, install the prefab exterior, rebuild the interior with a bar or TV or whatever.”
More kids ambled past her, heading home from school. Again she thought back to her own days, when school dismissal was boisterous. None of these kids said a word. They just stared at their phones.
“Okay,” Kat said, “so?”
“So James Isherwood’s registration didn’t read ‘stretch.’ It could be an oversight, no big deal. But I decided to take a deeper look. The car also doesn’t have a livery license. Again, that isn’t a huge deal. If the car was privately owned, that wouldn’t be necessary. But the boyfriend’s name isn’t Isherwood, correct?”
“Correct,” Kat said.
“So I looked some more. No harm, right? I called Isherwood’s house.”
“And?”
“He wasn’t home. Let me cut to the chase, okay? Isherwood lives in Islip, but he works for an energy company headquartered in Dallas. He flies out there a lot. That’s where he is now. So, see, he parked his car in long-term parking.”