But June was rarely hesitant in her life, and certainly would not be now. She said to Clines, “So it’s good that you found Hector Brennan last week.”
Clines nodded, clearing his throat. His face soured, as though he could not agree with her less.
“Where does he live, exactly?”
“In New Jersey. Fort Lee.”
June’s pulse suddenly spiked with the notion; all these years she’d assumed, for no reason, that Hector was still somewhere in the North-west, or maybe in Canada or Mexico, or else gone back to his home-town somewhere in upstate New York. That he was so close, just across the George Washington Bridge, and oddly-or not so oddly-where many Korean immigrants were starting to settle and live, gave her a fresh bloom of optimism.
“How long has he been there?”
“Apparently, at least ten years,” Clines said. “If not more.” He took out another folder from his briefcase and handed it to her. It was all he had been able to gather on Hector, details of what he had already told her over the phone: a couple of faxed arrest sheets and a list of convictions that went back to soon after he left her, ranging widely from Washington to Texas to Pennsylvania and, in the last ten or so years, New Jersey. All were for minor offenses, possession of stolen goods, assault, resisting arrest. Typical drifter trouble, Clines told her. Hector apparently had no phone, no credit cards, no driver’s license or car registrations, no bank accounts or loans. It had been pure chance that Clines had found an address for him; there was a recent judgment against him in small-claims court in Bergen County, where he was sued by his landlord for back rent and property damage. Clines had gone to the address, and though Hector was not living there anymore, a neighbor mentioned that he frequented a certain bar down by the river.
“What did he say?”
“Not much,” Clines said. “He didn’t want to talk.”
“But you tried to persuade him?”
Clines nodded.
“Well?”
“He wasn’t interested, Mrs. Singer.”
“What do you mean?” she said sharply, using the voice she reserved for intransigent antiques dealers, or customers whose checks had bounced. “I don’t understand you, Mr. Clines. You offered him money?”
“I did.”
“And he still didn’t agree?”
“We didn’t get as far as that. Frankly, once he heard your name, he didn’t say another word. He refused to speak to me. His friends told me I should leave.”
Her eyes were half blinded with anger and she was about to berate the man but then a square dose of dread cooled her heart. For of course she understood she was perhaps the last person in the world Hector Brennan would choose to see, much less aid.
She said, however, “We’ll have to try to convince him again.”
“If that’s what you wish,” Clines said, frowning as if the skies had begun to pelt him with rain. “I’ll arrange for a meeting when we return from Italy. If it happens that we’re away longer than I expect, I’ll have someone back here keep track of him.”
“You misunderstand,” June said. “I want you to take me to him. He must come with us.”
Clines’s brows knit sharply with alarm. “Your coming along is difficult enough. But I can’t have him as well. Especially when he isn’t interested. It can’t work this way.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to manage.”
“Some situations aren’t manageable. This is not some guided tour.” He considered her gravely. “Frankly, Mrs. Singer, you’re much too ill for any of this.”
She paused for a moment, hoping that somehow he might not have noticed; it was the reason she had kept the lights of the shop dimmed.
She said, “I’ll be fine.”
“What do you have? Is it cancer?”
“Listen,” she said, gripping his arm. His flesh was malleable through the thin wool of his blazer and she could feel the soft plait of his musculature; she realized that he was quite a bit older than she thought, maybe even in his sixties, and could now see from the lightness near his scalp that he colored his hair. But rather than dishearten her, his lack of sturdiness only focused her, made her want to gain a better hold on the moment.
“Listen to me. I promise it won’t be a hardship for you. You’ll be able to do your job. You should know right now that it will be more than worth your time. And we won’t get in your way. Hector can stay back with me, if I’m not feeling well.”
“This is a terrible, terrible mistake,” he said. “Especially if you want to find your son. I know you were briefly married to this man, but is he the boy’s father? Is that why you want him to come with us?”
“It’s how it has to be,” she answered, explaining nothing else.
A little later, she saw Clines out into the street. The early-evening air held a residual warmth from the glorious day but now she clicked with bodily triggers that she had not known before, and they told her this endeavor had best be finished soon, before the autumn coolness descended for good. Would the cold bury her? She had given Clines another check to cover the next two weeks, and at triple his rate for taking on the extra difficulty. Naturally, she had planned to tell him that Hector was the father of her son. But in that moment she suddenly thought otherwise, deciding that it was a matter between Nicholas and Hector and no one else. That Nicholas was his son would likely mean little to Hector. But she was hopeful it would be meaningful to Nicholas, so that someday, when perhaps he felt differently, he would know that he was not alone in the world. At this point in her life all she could do was to make a temporary bridge. Let them stand on it, if they wished; let them test its span; let them decide to bolster its footings, or else let it tumble.
She locked the door and shut off the lights save for the floor lamp beside the mattress. In the tiny bathroom in the back of the shop she brushed her teeth with lukewarm water. Any colder and it was like biting ice. She had to brush them very gently, as she remembered doing for Nicholas when he first got teeth, hers now feeling as if they were made of chalk. The next swipe might wear them right down to the nerve. She gargled and spit and then clipped up her hair to wash her face. It had grown back surprisingly quickly, if a shade grayer than before and not nearly as thick, and she had shocked her stylist by asking him to cut it in a boyish style. From afar, even across a room, she looked as youthful as ever, but up close the vigor was only in her eyes. Her face was more stilled than smooth, as though she had fought and fought and for the moment won but would never quite fight again.
Now she lay down on the bed and turned off the light. She felt her body unburden itself, shutting down in stages like an industrial complex. She could help it along: she had pills her doctor had dispatched an intern to deliver to her, including a special black kit fitted with the little syringes and vials, which the intern said she might eventually like to try; she’d even showed June how to do it, filling a syringe and demonstrating on a pillow. June had indeed tried it once already, and liked it plenty. But she refused to give in to the pain. Not tonight, at least. She had worked herself hard the last week, and look how much was accomplished. They were on their way. She wanted to feel her corpus. Her toes and fingers curled up first and then her joints contracted and the blood that had coursed with determination all through her returned to her heart depleted, nearly conquered, making her chest rheumy with its flood. All down her spine there was a serial drone of relief, each segment loosing itself from the next.
Only her belly couldn’t rest, unceasing now as always, ever grinding about the original tumor in its futile attempt to consume it. But of course she was the one being consumed, from the inside out, being transformed into something else entirely. It was almost laughably ironic, that the cancer should be in her stomach. That she would die with her belly full. Hadn’t she made that very pact a hundred times, a thousand times, when she was marching on the dismal road? Let me eat until I can’t, let me fill this infinite cave, and I’ll die right here. I’ll surrender. And thus here she was, never to feel anything like hunger again. But she might take it on now, in trade for her life, that clenching weight of famishment. There was no more perverse fancy June could have.