“Hi, I’m calling about the funeral costs for Rudy Drysdale, whose wake and burial you arranged back in April. I’m his cousin and the family never received the invoice. Could you tell me if it was sent and what address you used?”
Sure enough, the bill went to the very address toward which she is speeding.
“Lu,” AJ says, opening his door to her, the center one. Door number 2, as Lu thinks of it. The other two doors are nonfunctional, one bright blue, the other bright red, their street addresses still visible, all part of AJ’s attempt to disguise his wealth. His attempt to disguise who he really is.
He’s not surprised to see her on his doorstep, unannounced. She wishes he were.
“Is Lauranne here?” she asks.
“She’s teaching a hot yoga class at Charm City’s Midtown location,” he says. “She’ll be home about six or so.” Then: “Do you want to stay for dinner?”
She doesn’t and doubts that he will want her to, in the end. But all she says is: “If things aren’t too crazy at home. Melissa’s with the kids.”
“I’m sure, Dad can-”
“AJ, why did you lie to me about not knowing Rudy Drysdale?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He walks to the kitchen, Lu on his heels; he gets a bottle of wine from his retro refrigerator, a bulbous thing in orange, the kind of appliance that looks cheekily affordable, but costs a lot.
“I brought five bottles of this back from Italy,” he says. “I wish I could have imported cases of it. Costs maybe six dollars a bottle and it’s just the perfect summer wine. Want a glass?”
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll bring the rest tomorrow, for the party. Have to fight these hoarding instincts.” He is in no hurry to have this conversation. He pours himself a glass of wine, fixes a plate with slices of cured meats and cheeses, despite Lu’s assurances that she’s not hungry. “Smuggled all this in. Don’t tell Dad. You know he’s a stickler. I guess I shouldn’t tell you, either, officer of the court.”
“Not my jurisdiction,” Lu says. “However, Rudy Drysdale was.”
“Let’s sit by the pool,” he says. “It’s nice in the shade.”
“Nice” is a bit of a reach, but it’s pleasant enough. AJ really does have a green thumb and the U-shaped courtyard is full of containers. Mostly plants and herbs, but there are some pots of impatiens.
“How much have you figured out?” he asks.
“Enough,” Lu lies. Everyone knows the old canard that an attorney never asks a question to which she doesn’t know the answer, but that’s for court, after investigations, depositions, discovery. Right now, Lu doesn’t have the luxury of knowing the answers. She has to bluff.
“But not everything,” AJ surmises. “You can’t. No one can. Only Rudy, and he’s dead.”
“You knew him in high school. You can’t have forgotten him. Davey remembers him. Even Bash remembers him. He’s the kid you were trying to protect, at the cast party. For months, he hung around you, tried to get in with your crowd. That’s not someone you’d forget. Why would you lie about that?”
“He’s a disturbed individual, Lu. I didn’t want to be linked to him.”
“Davey didn’t have a problem admitting he knew him.”
“Good for Davey.”
“Of course, Davey didn’t pay his funeral expenses.” She decides to risk a guess. “Or his legal bills.”
AJ nods. “You’re a good investigator, Lu. The Drysdales don’t even know who helped them out. I used an intermediary.”
“Bash?”
“No, why would you think that? I mean, once a bag man, always a bag man, but I didn’t want him involved. He had as much to lose as anyone, I guess, but I couldn’t trust him either. And no one had more to lose than Rudy. It was his idea, he acted on his own, no one knew he would do anything like that. I wanted no part of it. Settle down, I told Rudy. It’s just talk. No one’s going to listen to her. No one’s looking for you. But then Davey had to go and pay her. Worst thing you can do with a blackmailer. For one thing, it only convinced her that she was right, after all these years. Why would Davey pay her if he didn’t rape her? Forget the statute of limitations-who wants to deal with this kind of scandal in midlife, when you’ve finally got things figured out. Who wants to be accountable for his seventeen-year-old self? Even Bash couldn’t afford to have something like this being batted around. It’s one of the few times I’ve been glad Noel is dead. He was spared this stupidity, at least.”
His voice trails off. From somewhere in his house, a phone begins to ring. It rings twice, stops, goes to voice mail, presumably. Lu remembers another ringing phone, the black squat phone in their living room, how it rang and rang that winter their grandmother was trying to get through to them. Their father changed their home number, then AJ got a phone in his room. Anything to keep the secrets at bay, right, Dad? AJ had a phone in his room, and Lu was so jealous. He was on it all the time. All the time.
“You all talked that morning and agreed on a story. You worked out all the details about what you were going to say.” Right down to the board game you played.
“Everything we said was true, so what was the harm in making sure we said the same thing? I was a lawyer’s son. The key was to protect Davey. I knew what could happen if we opened the door to any doubt. Davey’s future was hanging in the balance. She showed up, uninvited. She and Davey had a big loud argument in his room, but then they were quiet as anything. We did play a drinking game. She passed out, we put her in the Robinsons’ bed to sleep it off, then Bash and Noel took her home. True, it was kind of chickenshit to leave her on the doorstep, but no one wanted to come into contact with her old man under the best of circumstances.”
Lu’s memory for faces and names isn’t good. She’s long been aware of that weakness and done what she can to correct it. She read somewhere that it’s bullshit to say, Oh, I don’t remember names or faces. But she tries. She knows she tries. What she does remember are stories, especially family ones. She could have recited every detail about the short life of Adele Closter Brant, as it was told to her. She can taste the Eskimo pie she ate the day they met Noel, remember the feel of the air on that June night she saw AJ sing in the Tree of Life chorus, count almost every freckle on Bash’s back as he rose and fell on top of Lynne in Lu’s childhood bed. She remembers that Thanksgiving weekend, her father pulling details out of AJ, telling him to stop toying with language about who was invited, who wasn’t invited. And not two hours ago, Bash said of Rudy: He wasn’t invited.
She says: “Rudy Drysdale was there. That night. How-”
AJ stands, walks to the edge of his pool. A lap pool, he defended to Lu when she mocked this expense by ascetic AJ. He and Lauranne needed to swim to counterbalance their vigorous yoga practices. If the kids of his Southwest Baltimore neighborhood ever learned about this hidden oasis, no one could stop them from scaling the fence behind the property. But as much as AJ had given to the community, he had walled off this part of himself. Walled off the pool, the sustainable lawn furniture. AJ didn’t want the world to know what he had, what he desired.
“Not exactly,” AJ says to his lap pool. “He offered Nita a ride home from work. Turns out that when he realized she was going to Davey’s house, he parked his car up the street and sneaked around to the back. Isn’t it ironic-I’m pretty sure it’s irony, at any rate. Davey and I defended him, at that very house, from being a little Peeping Tom pervert, skulking around with his camera. And there he was, in the woods, watching us.”
Lu feels as if she’s approaching a woodland creature, something timid and prone to bolt. She lets him keep his back to her, doesn’t move. “And what did he see, AJ?”