Hide and Seek (3 page)

I looked over at Barry Kahn.
Jesus, I was in his office. I was the Woman in the Moon
. He was sitting back, feet on the bottom drawer of his desk, fingers steepled together, eyes closed. He didn't say a word.

Musically, “Woman in the Moon” was like Barry's own “Light of Our Times.” I began to play, to sing in a soft, uncertain voice that suddenly seemed dreary and ordinary to me. As I sang, I sensed I was losing him.

I finished. Silence. I finally dared to look at him. He hadn't changed position, hadn't moved. Finally he said, “Thank you.”

I waited. Nothing more came from Barry Kahn.

I put the music back in the briefcase. “Any criticism?” I asked, dreading his answer, but wanting to hear something more than “thank you.”

He shrugged. “How can I criticize my own child? It's my music,” he said, “not yours. My voice, imitated by yours. I'm not interested.”

I could feel a deep blush redden my face. I felt so humiliated, but also angry. “I thought maybe you'd be pleased. I wrote it in honor of you.” I wanted to run out of the room, but I forced myself to stay.

“Fine. Okay, I'm honored. But I thought you were here to play
your
songs. If I want echoes, I'll sing in a subway tunnel. Are all your songs like mine?”

No, goddamn you. They're not like anybody else's songs!
“You mean do I have something more original?”

“Originality's what I'm looking for. Originality's a start.”

I began leafing through my sheet music. My fingers felt numb and unsure. A full marching band was stomping around inside my head. “Would you listen to one more?”

He stood up. He was shaking his head, trying to stop me from going on. “Really, Maggie. I don't think—”

“I do have one. Many. My own, not yours.” I had promised myself I wouldn't be embarrassed.

He sighed, having already given up on me. “Since you're here …
one
more song. One song, Maggie.”

I plucked out “Cornflower Blue.” It was a little like an old Carole King hit. Maybe not original enough.
Too precious. Too clever. More bullshit
. The noise inside my brain had become a loud roar like the sound of an approaching subway train. I felt as though I were about to be run over.

I stuffed “Cornflower” back in the briefcase and chose another song—”Loss of Grace.” Yes. This was a better choice. I had written it recently, since I had come to New York.

One song
.

I could feel Barry Kahn's eyes on me, feel his growing impatience. The room felt hot. I didn't look at him. Just at the music for “Loss of Grace.”

The song was about my marriage to Phillip. It was deeply personal. The initial ecstasy, the love I'd felt, or thought that I did. Then the mounting terror. The horror of that first fall from grace … and never being able to stop falling.

One song
.

I turned to the piano, took one deep breath, and began to play.

I sang very softly at first, then with mounting passion as the song gripped me and I remembered exactly what had inspired it.
Phillip, Jennie, myself, our house near West Point
.

I could sense something new in the room as I sang, a kinship and understanding I had longed for in my letters, a bond between me and the man sitting silently at the other side of the room.

I finished, and waited for what seemed like forever for him to say something. Finally, I turned around. His eyes were closed. He looked as though he had a headache. Barry Kahn opened his eyes.

“You shouldn't rhyme ‘time’ with ‘mine,’“ he said. “It's a false rhyme, and while you might get away with it in a country song it's distracting when you're trying something serious.”

I began to cry
. I couldn't help it. It was the last thing in the universe I wanted to do. I was furious at myself.

“Hey,” he said, but I had already jammed the song into my briefcase and was heading for the door. I almost started to run.
I wouldn't run though
.

“Hey,” he repeated. “Stop crying. Hold on a minute.”

I turned to him. “I'm sorry I took up so much of your precious, valuable time. But if all you can talk about is one lousy rhyme, when I've just sung my heart out, then there's no way we can work together. And don't worry. I won't bother you again.”

I rushed out the door, past an astonished Lynn Need-ham, and took the fancy Deco elevator to the lobby.
Screw him. Screw Barry Kahn
.

I was tough enough to deal with this—I had to be. I had a little girl to take care of, not to mention myself to look out for. That was why I had written to half a dozen music companies besides Barry Kahn's from West Point Hospital. Tomorrow I would see one of the others. And then another. And another after that if I needed to.

Somebody was going to like my music, my songs. They were too good, too
true
, for somebody not to listen, and to feel something.

It's your loss, Barry Kahn, Mr. Big Shot. Mr. My-Time-Is-So-Precious!

You missed out on Maggie Bradford!

CHAPTER 4

D
ID YOU EVER want to say, even to shout out loud,
Hey, I'm smart. I'm an okay person. I have some talent
.

I shouted those very words in Times Square. No problem. Nobody even noticed. I fit right in with the rest of the loony-birds there.

I wandered for a couple of hours, oblivious to the falling snow, then went to pick up Jennie at her school on West Seventy-third. I felt like absolute crap and hoped I didn't look it.
Sheesh, what a day
.

“Let's celebrate,” I said. “Tomorrow starts the Christmas holiday. Give your favorite mom a big hug, and we'll go to some fancy New York restaurant. Just the two of us. Where do you want to eat? Lutèce? Windows On The World? Rumpelmayer's?”

Jennie carefully thought the offer over, wrinkling her forehead and pulling on her chin, as she always does when she has to make an important decision. “How ’bout McDonald's. Then we can go see a flick.”

“Quarter Pounders it is!” I laughed, and took her small hand. “My sweet bunny rabbit, you're what's important. And you like my songs.”

“I
love
your songs, Mommy.”

The two of us began to babble at each other—just like always. We were “best friends,” “girlfriends,” “the original motormouths,” “soul sisters,” “the odd couple.” We would “never be alone, because we would always have each other.”

“How was your day, Sweetie? Boy, you've got to be tough to make it in New York. Fortunately, we're tough.”

“School was fun. I made another new friend named Julie Goodyear. She's
real
funny. Mrs. Crolius said I'm
smart
.”

“You are smart. You're also pretty, and you're a very nice person. You're awfully
short
though.”

“I'm going to be bigger than you, don't you think so?”

“Yes, I think so. I think you'll be around seven foot or so.”

On and on and on like that.

The motormouths.

Best friends.

We were both doing pretty well actually; getting used to New York—kind of; getting over Phillip as well as we could.

To hell with Barry Kahn
.

You blew it, Mr. Big Shot!

It was as dark as Phillip's heart by the time Jennie and I got home. All my feelings of defiance had evaporated, and I looked at the front of our run-down brownstone with complete dismay.

Shit, shit, shit. I guess we'll have to live here a while longer. Like maybe the rest of our lives
.

I opened the front door, and it yawned as it always did. Typical New York reaction.

Damn, damn, damn!
The lights had gone out in the hall and on the first-floor landing.

All I could see was a pattern of light edging its way through the first-floor window from the lamppost in front of the house.

“Spooky,” Jennie whispered. “Scary and spooky.”

“No,” I said. “This isn't spooky. This is fun in the Big Apple.” I took her hand and we started up the “fun” stairs.

I stopped moving. My body tensed, and I tucked Jennie behind me to protect her.

Somebody
was sitting in the shadows on the landing. The person was silent, unmoving. It was somebody tall and well built.

This wasn't good. This
was
scary and spooky.

I moved toward the figure cautiously. “Hello. Who is it? Hello up there,” I called out, thinking of the horror stories I had heard about New York—and about the horrors I had recently endured in West Point.

The person seemed to be wearing something on his head. A strange top hat?
Something
weird as hell.

Phillip!
I thought the unthinkable. I knew better, but the flashback came anyway.

Phillip loved to frighten me, jumping out from behind a bush, from behind a closet door, knowing he could scare me and thinking it funny when he did. Once, on Halloween, he wore an Indian headdress and came at me with a tomahawk. It was the worst of the scares. At the end, of course, it was I who had jumped out at him, had leaped at him with the gun in my hand, firing … firing …

But Phillip was dead, I told myself, and there were no such things as ghosts, not even in New York.

I inched closer. Still, the figure did not move. I neared the landing. “Hello!” I called again. “This
isn't
funny. Please talk to me. Just say hi.”

The sound of our stealthy footsteps on the stairs reminded me of Phillip's steps, the way he
stalked
around the house.

Becoming a little hysterical, consumed by ancient fear, I forced myself to reach the landing.

Behind me, Jennie whispered, picking up my fear. “Who is it, Mommy?”

Not twice
, I thought.
You won't hurt us twice. No damn way!

I lunged at the threatening figure, striking out at it with my heavy case. I hit the bastard hard.

He toppled unresistingly, and I realized what I had done.

“Oh my God! I can't believe it!” I started to laugh, relief not entirely wiping out the dread. “Hooo boy.”

Jennie hurried up the final stairs, laughing with me. “Phillip” was a mammoth basket of what had to be a few hundred dollars' worth of long-stemmed roses.

I opened the note that came with them.

TO MAGGIE BRADFORD
.

HERE'S TO THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR RETURN TO GRACE. IF YOU REALLY WANT THE JOB, YOU'RE CRAZY, BUT YOU'RE HIRED. YOU MADE MY ‘PRECIOUS TIME’ PASS LIKE IT WAS NOTHING TODAY. TRUST ME ON THAT
.

BARRY

A kind of funny story, in retrospect anyway. A happy ending for sure. But as I write it now, the question comes again, and it's not so funny anymore. Not to me.

When I'm in trouble, is my first impulse always to kill?

Have I murdered, not once, but twice?

A lot of people think so. One of them happens to be a prosecuting attorney for the southern district of New York.

First, there was Phillip Bradford.

And then—
there was Will
.

CHAPTER 5

San Diego, California, July 1967

Will Shepherd, age six, was dreaming of Indians. Fierce and remorseless, they came at him in waves, their horses neighing and rearing, their arrows as long as spears, pointed at his heart. He loved the excitement, loved the movie in his head, loved the danger.

He heard a splash!

It didn't make any sense. Will opened his eyes, shut them almost immediately, then drifted back to sleep.

Cowboys and Indians again.

No splashes. Not in his movie anyway
.

Will woke again at quarter to eight, dressed quietly so as not to disturb his still-sleeping brother, Palmer, and hurried down through the quiet house.

In the kitchen he fetched an armful of Welch's grape jelly, peanut butter, milk, and half a loaf of bread. Breakfast for one.
Who needed a mother? Who needed anybody?

Will saw his face and uncombed blond hair looking back at him from the side of the shiny toaster. He had to admit it, he thought.
He missed his mother a lot. He missed her terribly. He missed her making peanut butter and jellies
.

He knew that she had gone to live in Los Angeles. He didn't have to suffer through the terrible fights she had with his father anymore, but at this moment he would have preferred the fights to the silence. Sometimes he and Palmer missed their mom so bad it made them cry at the stupidest times. But usually he
hated
her. Usually, but not today.

The splash in the swimming pool?

Suddenly Will remembered. He collected his dish and glass and put them in the sink, then ran out the screen door into sweet, dappled sunshine and the call of sparrows.

He came tearing around the corner of the blue-trimmed white clapboard house, and ran to the edge of the pool. He stopped so suddenly he nearly fell over his own sneakered feet.

And he screamed and screamed, screamed so shrilly he woke his little brother, whose face appeared at the window above him.

Will screamed so bitterly that neighbors came rushing to his rescue. They held him, and tried to shield him from what he had already seen, and would never forget.

What the six-year-old boy saw floating on the shimmering water of the pool was his father in his red-plaid bathrobe and beige trousers. On one foot was a yellow slipper; the other foam slipper was drifting as free as a lily pad.

His father's eyes were open, and staring right at him.
Your fault
, they seemed to tell him.
Bad boy. This is your fault, Will
.

You know what you did!

You know what you did!

At 5:52
A.M.
Anthony Shepherd had purposefully walked outside his house and drowned himself in the family pool.

And whatever part of Will Shepherd that was worth saving seemed to drown with his father.

A few days after their father's suicide, Will and Palmer spent their final California afternoon choosing from among all of their clothes and toys. Just enough to fill two suitcases each.
No more than that
.