Nikki is busy with the camera, taking still shots of tripping pirouettes, poses by the fireplace in the living room, while I dress. Tonight is the capstone of a half year of lessons and a month of rehearsals, a cast of hundreds. The children’s dance workshop presents “Alice in Wonderland.” For this, the studio owner has rented the high school auditorium. It is the only place in town large enough to seat the legion of proud parents, and grandparents, siblings, and cousins, who will be on hand for this event.
As I look down the hall I see the litter of last night’s gathering. We’d entertained, and our guests had kids and these together with Sarah have trashed the better part of our house. The hallway is a scene of devastation. Ken and Barbie are on the floor, half naked. There is a littered trail of tiny clothes to the living room door and beyond, left as if by some dying tribe of Lilliputians wandering in the desert.
“Do you have the tickets?” Nikki asks me.
I check my wallet. They’re not there.
“I thought you had them,” I say.
“I gave them to you while you were shaving.”
I look in the bathroom. There they are on the countertop next to the sink.
“I have them.”
I hear Nikki sigh from the other room, something that says I would lose it if my head was not tethered to my body. Lately, she might be right. It seems that work is taking its toll, torn between two offices, living in the schizoid realm, half defense and half prosecution, commuting a million miles between each daily.
“Did you get cash at the ATM?” she says.
“Oh shit.” I say it to myself, under my breath, and still she hears this.
“I told you to get some money on your way home,” she says.
“I know, I forgot,” I say.
“Well, what are we going to do for cash?” she says.
“We’ll take it from grocery money,” I tell her.
“And forget to put it back,” she says.
While she talks I am raiding the system of little envelopes in the top drawer of our bedroom dresser, thirty dollars from the envelope marked “Food.”
“Damn it, Paul.” Nikki is standing behind me in the doorway. “I don’t ask you to do much,” she says. “I run the house, do the cooking on top of a job,” she says. “And you can’t remember to go to the bank on the way home.”
“OK. I forgot,” I say. “Give me a break.”
I pass her in the doorway, looking for my tie which I laid on a chair in the living room earlier. Sarah is watching television, the sound muted, CNN. It is the news I left on after dinner. Nikki is oblivious to television, so long as she does not have to listen to the noise. Of late, increasingly, what little time I get, I watch in silent mode only hitting the volume for some seeming world crisis. It is part of the price for peace in our house.
I find my tie, stop for a moment, and watch my daughter. She is dark locks primped and combed, like a gossamer fairy princess in her costume. Her gaze, sparkling brown eyes, is anchored to the screen. Then I look. Pictures of starving little children in some far-off place, bodies emaciated, in pain, bloated bellies and round, wanting eyes. She fixes on these, intense, absorbed, a communion of the innocent.
The picture changes, a talking head. Sarah looks over at me. I am struggling with my tie.
“Daddy, what is wrong with those children?”
It’s better, I think, to confront this than to sugarcoat it.
“They don’t have enough to eat,” I say.
“Why not? Why doesn’t somebody feed them?”
“There isn’t enough food where they live.”
“Why doesn’t someone bring food to them?”
“There are bad men there with guns,” I say.
“Why doesn’t somebody get rid of the bad men?”
In a nutshell, the circular debate of nations.
“That’s complicated,” I say.
She looks at me, the first thing she has not understood. Like most little ones, Sarah has acquired selfishness only as a competitive instinct when confronted with the rivalry of other children at play. On a more native level she is an ocean of empathy. In the quiet and solitary play that she seems to enjoy, her dolls are nearly always sick, throwing up. They suffer from a physician’s desk reference of maladies. It is any excuse to mother them.
To Nikki and me, Sarah is a litany of little offerings, crushed petals and broken stems, the gatherings of the garden, scraps of paper colored and punched, certificates of devotion folded and rolled in every hue made by Crayola. Tonight, for Sarah, it is not so much her performance that matters, but that she offers this achievement, as a gift to us. At five, children it seems have no concept of parents’ unconditional love. In Sarah’s limited view, I think, she feels the need to make some partial payment in the coin of acceptance, some compensation for our continued affections. She does not realize that she is compensation enough.
The phone rings in the kitchen. Nikki answers it.
“Just a moment,” she says.
“It’s for you.” She looks at me, an expression that says “this better not be what I think it is.” She hands me the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Madriani. It’s Claude Dusalt.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry to call you at home at this hour,” he says, “but it was important. We have a break in the case. Out near the university. Some evidence in a van. A lead on the Putah Creek killer. We need a warrant, tonight,” he says. “Can you meet me at your office in half an hour?”
I swallow hard and look at Nikki. She is watching me through the practiced eyes of cynicism. On my face, in the cast of my expression, she reads the message of still another disappointment.
“I understand,” I say. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I tell him.
Dusalt hangs up.
“I have to go,” I tell her. “It’s a major break in the case. They need a warrant.”
“What else?” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
She’s already moving, grabbing her coat and purse.
With my wife I have learned over the years that it is not so much her words as her actions that convey true emotions. There is little hostility detected in her tone, more an expression of resignation. But Nikki is going about the routine of departure in stiff, measured movements, the sign of a deep, brooding fury.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “These things happen.”
“Sure,” she says. She gathers up Sarah and heads for the door. “You’d better hurry. It wouldn’t do to be late,” she tells me.
“Daddy’s not coming?” My daughter is looking at her mother with big oval eyes.
“Daddy has other, more important things,” says Nikki.
Sarah’s little saucers are now aimed at me.
I smile a little pained expression. I bend down to give her a hug to tell her that I am sorry.
Before I can, Nikki ushers her toward the car in the garage like some shepherded lamb. They are late, and in a hurry. My wife’s words are the last thing I hear as the door slams closed behind them.
“Daddy has work to do tonight,” she says.
Another debit in the parental account of a father’s love.
Chapter Six
“I want the van left where it is,” I say, “under surveillance for now, until I can work up a warrant. Nobody’s to touch it further without my approval. Understood?”
Claude has Denny Henderson taking notes as the three of us move at a quickstep across the commons and up the stairs of the county administration building. The lights out front have come on, though it is not yet completely dark.
“And I will need a good stenographer, somebody who can take dictation and who knows how to do a warrant.” I look at Henderson. “Do we have anybody?” He looks at Claude, who nods his assurance.
“Sheila Aikens,” he says, “the older gal in your office. Feretti used her, said she was pretty good.”
“Find her. Get her here now. I want the van watched around the clock. And get the owner registration.”