“It’s not about fault, Rita.”
“That’s what people always say when it’s their fault!” I saw a blur then, a kind of madness rising in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything else. I stood up. “You cheated and it’s my fault? Are you crazy? Are you stone fucking crazy?”
He rubbed his forehead. “You don’t get it.”
“The hell I don’t. You slept with her, you were living with me at the time. We’re practically engaged-”
“Practically? That’s the whole problem right there in a nutshell. We’re either engaged or we’re not!”
“Thank God I didn’t marry you! Thank God that is one mistake I did not make! Now go pack your bags.”
He looked as if I’d slapped him. “You don’t mean this.”
“I do too. I’ll be back in two hours. Be gone by then. Leave your keys on the table.” I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
“Rita. Rita, wait. Listen,” he said, but I kept walking. One foot in front of the other, out the front door.
My knees buckled slightly when I got outside, but I walked across the dry lawn and didn’t fall, and didn’t cry. My heart was a tight knot at the center of my chest. I strode to the car and got in, careful to close the door gently. I pulled out of the driveway and drove the speed limit to Lancaster Avenue. And I did not drive aimlessly, I knew just where I was going.
On the way I made a phone call to Fiske, whom I hadn’t even called about the murder scene, so preoccupied was I with my personal life. I told him tersely what I’d seen, but not about Patricia’s erotic renderings of the NFL or of his own son. He didn’t have to know about that. And not from me.
I wondered how my father would react to the news, but I figured he’d handle it okay if I didn’t spell out the cheating part. And if I told him about the virus, he’d take his sharpest cleaver and geld the man. I laughed to myself until I thought about what Paul said. About my not being home.
I pointed the car toward the city, and it struck me for the first time how strange it was that I had no friends my own age. No women friends, even close friends among my partners. We used to make lunch dates, but a deposition or trial would come up. Soon I’d stopped penciling anybody in. I realized I was speeding and eased off the gas.
I reached the Italian Market, but a sawhorse blocked Eighth Street about a block from my father’s shop. The traffic was clogged and confused. A siren blared close by, and a blue-shirted Philly cop with a thick gut was waving a line up of overheated drivers down Christian Street. No way was I doing that. It would take me an extra twenty minutes to double back to the butcher shop, then another twenty to find a parking space. How would I get to cry on my father’s shoulder by dinner-time?
I stopped my car in front of the cop and opened the window. “Can’t I get over to Ninth, Officer?”
He shook his head and waved me on. “Not tonight. Keep it moving, lady.”
“But I’ll be late if I take the detour.”
“You can’t get through. There was a shooting and the perp took off. You wanna run into him?”
“A shooting? Where?”
“Lady-”
I felt my pulse quicken. “On Ninth? My father has a butcher shop on Ninth.”
He looked down at me. “Which one?”
“Morrone’s. The little one.”
His face fell. “Pull over, honey,” he said quietly, and waved the other cars past me.
14
Right this way,” said a woman cop, as she led me down a corridor in the basement of the hospital.
I felt drained. I had cried all the tears I could cry. My head was pounding. The only way to get through it was not to experience it. Keep it at a distance. And my emotions, too.
“You okay, Rita?” the cop asked, turning back as she walked. She had short brown hair, tight features, and no makeup. A hard face but for the kindness in her expression.
“Fine.”
“It’ll be over soon.”
She picked up the pace and I followed. The floor slanted down, like a ramp. Down, then doubling back, and going farther down. We reached the very bottom of the hospital and passed through a wide brown door that swung shut behind us. morgue, said a sign on the door.
“Hey, Jim,” the cop said to a man in a white coat like a butcher’s. “You ready for us?”
I stood behind the cop to shield myself from the room. A formaldehyde stink filled my nose. The air was chilled. A chalkboard hung on the wall and it read, inexplicably: HEART, RT. LUNG, LT. LUNG, LIVER, SPLEEN, RT. KIDNEY, LT. KIDNEY, BRAIN, PANCREAS, SPLEEN, THYROID.
“All set,” said the man, who stood beside a long table made of dull stainless steel. The table had slats across the bottom and a large round drain peeked from underneath them. I didn’t want to think about what went down the drain. Next to the table was a scale with a steel tray hanging underneath its clocklike face. A butcher’s scale.
“Cold in here,” the cop said.
The man in white wanted to reply but thought better of it. He punched up his steel glasses with a deft movement, his arm a clinical blur of white.
“You want another Coke, Rita?” asked the cop.
I shook my head. No. This wasn’t happening. None of it was happening. The man left for the adjoining room. There was the sound of a door being unlatched, a metallic ca-chunk, then a heavy slam as it sealed shut. I knew those noises from the shop. It was a freezer.
The man reappeared pushing a gurney. A steel bar surrounded the gurney and a black tarp was slung between the bars. On the tarp rested a white nylon bag with a zipper down the middle. The white bag was lumpy and formless. Smaller than I expected. I hadn’t realized he was so short. Oh God.
“Why do I have to do this?” I asked them, fighting not to cry. “We know it’s him. It has to be him. They saw.”
The cop touched my shoulder. “It’s procedure,” she said.
“Actually, it’s state law,” said the man in white. He began to unzip the bag with a care that suggested he feared something would catch on the inside.
I covered my mouth and turned away. Behind me was a black counter and underneath it a bank of ugly green cabinets. The zippering sound reverberated off the cold walls. Then the noise stopped suddenly and there was silence.
“Miss?” said a professional voice. The man in white.
I wondered how many times he’d said this, and to whom. To mothers and fathers and daughters and friends. Miss? Look at the body of someone you loved. Or someone you know. Or someone you hardly knew but who has no one else to mourn him, or even to identify his remains. Miss?
“Is this him, Miss?”
I made myself turn back.
It was a dark face that shone under the harsh white light, framed by the white body bag. He looked like a black child, sleeping in a snowy receiving blanket. He was a black child.
“Is this LeVonne Jenkins?” the man asked.
No, it’s not LeVonne. LeVonne was only in tenth grade, so it can’t be him. It shouldn’t be him. I nodded, yes.
And began to cry.
Later, I waited in the ultramodern waiting room with my head against the cold glass wall, slouching in a mauve chair that promised more comfort than it gave. The waiting room was empty except for a TV, and Rescue 911 was returning from commercial. A woman, drowning, screamed for help. I felt raw inside, exhausted. I drew my jacket closer around my shoulders.
The operation had started an hour ago, and they told me it would be a long one. Difficult. A surgeon gave me the odds, like a gambler, and they weren’t good. I picked up a battered magazine from the glass coffee table, looking for distraction. Highlights, a children’s magazine. Hippos wearing Hawaiian leis danced across the cover, at an animal luau. I opened the magazine.
At midpage was a comic strip. GOOFUS AND GALLANT, said the title. In the panel, a young boy climbed a set of porch steps. In the middle of the steps was a roller skate. Goofus leaves his toys on the step, said the caption. The next panel showed another young boy rolling a bike down the sidewalk, heading for the garage. Gallant puts his bicycle away, so no one trips over it.