House of Secrets - v4 (9 page)

The day after Robbie’s beating was a Wednesday. But there was no visit to see the angels. Instead, his mother remained in her bed all morning and into the afternoon, weeping copiously. Robbie slipped into the room silently and sat and watched. He was fascinated, though not especially moved. He had never really noticed before how his mother was also a little soft herself, in the same fashion as the Venus lady in the painting at the museum. He left the room once, to go fetch his sketchbook, then returned and sat in the chair working on his endless conch shells. Eventually, his mother’s weeping subsided somewhat and she noticed her son seated across the room. She summoned him to the bed; dutifully he came to her. She wrapped the boy in her fleshy arms and told him in a soft cooing voice what a bad, bad man his father was. How mean. And how ugly. Robbie didn’t disagree. His father
was
bad. But so was his mother. The both of them were ugly and foul. Robbie marveled that he could be the child of such people. He nestled in closer to his pathetic mother. She was as pliant as the pillows. Her milky skin was clammy. He felt as if he could sink deeply into it.
Vile
. Finally, his mother fell asleep, and soon after, so did Robbie. His dreams were black and bloody.

His dates with the angels had ended.

R
obert Smallwood leaned down to plant a kiss on his aunt’s cheek. The cheek was wet with the poor woman’s tears. The light tang of salt transferred to Smallwood’s lips.

“Oh, Robbie. Our
Joy
. I just don’t understand the world we live in anymore. A beautiful young woman like that. My God, what in the world do you…?”

If she even actually knew her question, she was unable to line up the words to complete it. Smallwood took his aunt’s small hand in his own — the very hand that had delivered the necessary blows to Cousin Joy — and massaged her knuckles gently. What could he say to his aunt?

She deserved it
.

The world is better off
.

He remained mute. His aunt used her captured hand to lead Smallwood over to the pair of easels near the foot of the closed casket. The easels were covered with photographs depicting Joy Resnick on her thirty-four-year journey from birth to death. Smallwood released his aunt’s moist hand while he gazed at the photographs. It was all there. Baby Joy. Little girl Joy. Elementary school Joy. Teen Joy. College Joy. First real job Joy.

Whore Joy
.

Smallwood moved closer to the casket. He placed his fingers on the lid and let them travel lightly along the wood as he stepped toward the head of the box.

She was
there
. Mere inches below his hand. Sweet. Dead. Joy.

Later, Smallwood parked himself against the wall to observe Cousin Joy’s former colleagues, who had turned out in full force. Joy’s boss was among the mourners, an imposing bald man in an elegant smoke-colored suit. He was holding forth to a semicircle of sycophants, going on and on about Joy this and Joy that. The man was all praise and bullshit. But he was not the one who had been with Joy that night on Shelter Island. He was too tall. And the man with Joy had not been bald. He thought,
He fucked her, too. Smug, owl-headed hustler. Big bald cootch-sniffing prick
.

Smallwood inventoried Joy’s other colleagues to see if any of the men showed signs of a recent wicked encounter with an iron pipe. None of them did. Smallwood knew for a fact that his blows would have required medical attention. Most likely there’d been stitches. None of these particular cretins appeared to have so much as a scratch on them.

As he stood looking over the gathering, Smallwood’s eye snagged on a smallish woman who was standing off — seemingly by herself — near the rear of the room. She was somewhere in her mid- to upper twenties, with short bangs, thick dark eyebrows, and a quite complicated pair of eyeglasses, architecturally speaking. The eyewear seemed to be a statement, though Smallwood wasn’t sure what the statement was. She was an odd duck. There was an anxious quality coming off her. Smallwood could practically smell it. Her small, pouty mouth was drenched in fire-engine-red lipstick, and behind her mad glasses her eyes seemed to be in continuous motion, deliberately surveying the other people in the room in much the way Smallwood was doing. Smallwood moved away from the wall and traveled slowly around the room, purposefully passing several times near the woman. Each time he sensed her roving eyes landing on him, he felt as if her gaze was crawling over him like worms.

Fascinating.

I
t was raining like mad. Despite the tarp affixed over the mound of earth next to Joy’s grave, the pounding rain was having its way. Streams of chocolate-colored mud ran freely into the waiting grave.

A dozen folding chairs had been set up under a white canopy, sitting unevenly on the lumpy Astroturf carpet. Smallwood sat awkwardly in his chair, his legs overflowing the small plastic seat. He would have preferred to stand out in the rain, but Aunt Judy wanted him under the canopy, next to his grandmother. Doris Smallwood, in her early eighties and nearly as large as Robert, sat silent and sour through the entire service. If Smallwood felt like a giant in the wobbly chair, he suspected his grandmother did as well. The elderly woman lived alone upstate and didn’t have much to do with the family these days. By all appearances, being forced to come down to attend her granddaughter’s funeral hadn’t done much to warm her heart up toward her kin.

At the conclusion of the service, Smallwood’s aunt rose from her chair and was guided across the lumpy ground by her son, Jeffrey, who handed her the rose she was to place on Joy’s casket. Smallwood’s eyes had remained glued on Our Lady of the Funky Glasses, who was standing along the edge of the gathering, staring a hole through the casket. The rain running off her umbrella reminded Smallwood of a curtain of cheap plastic beads. As he sat watching, a man stepped up unnoticed behind the woman, ducking past the rain-bead curtain and joining her under the umbrella. He was of medium height and weight and was wearing a knee-length olive-green coat and a brown floppy-brimmed hat pulled down low on his head.

Smallwood’s whiskers twitched.

The man had whispered something into the woman’s ear. She went rigid. Even behind her cagey lenses, the fear that came into the woman’s eyes was evident. The man continued to speak softly into her ear. Smallwood was certain the man must have told her not to turn around, but to remain facing forward. Was this
him?
Smallwood looked for signs of his handiwork on the man’s skull, but the hat was pulled down too far. Whoever he was, he seemed to have a lot to say. Aunt Judy had completed her rose tribute and Jeffrey was guiding her back to her chair. Smallwood had to shift in his seat to maintain his view of the curious couple. The way the man was keeping his eyes trained on the side of the woman’s face looked as if he wanted to see what her reaction was to his words. The woman nodded once. And then a second time. This seemed to be the desired response. He reached up with his hand and touched her lightly on the cheek, then backed away and disappeared into the light mist.

The heavens opened up even more. The crazy beating of the rain on the canopy was like machine-gun fire. So was Robert Smallwood’s heartbeat.

T
he general movement toward the cars was swift. The priest came under the canopy and began his condolences to the family. Cousin Jeffrey had a hand on Smallwood’s arm and was babbling something incoherent about Smallwood’s parents, both of whom had been dead for years and were buried just several feet away, beneath a black marble angel. Smallwood was not even sure what he said to Jeffrey; he knew only that he freed his arm brusquely and trotted across the spongy grass toward the roadway. Miss Eyeglasses was just getting into a blue Mazda. Smallwood hurried over to her. The unknowing of what he was doing was exhilarating.

Reaching the car, he grabbed hold of the door frame just as the woman was about to pull the driver’s side door closed. The rain was plastering Smallwood’s thin hair to his head in silly bangs.

“Wait!” he yelled. His heart was still going crazy. He felt a surge of
power
. “What did that man want? I saw him. What did he want with you?”

The woman tugged at the door. “Let go!”

But Smallwood’s strength was triple the woman’s. She couldn’t budge the door. “I’m Joy’s cousin,” Smallwood blurted. “I don’t like some asshole bursting in on her funeral like that.”

The woman pleaded. “I have to go. Please. I—”

Somehow she managed to jerk the door from Smallwood’s grip, and it slammed shut. Smallwood watched through the window as she jabbed the key blindly at the ignition. It wasn’t going in. Her hand was shaking too much, and her urgency was only lousing up her ability to hit the slot. She jabbed at the ignition several times and then, fully frustrated, threw the key at the dashboard and collapsed against the steering wheel, her arms crossing daintily to give her head a soft place to land.

Fascinating.

O
n Tuesday, President Hyland faced reporters to talk about the European Union’s new carbon emissions reduction timetable and a controversial inclusion in the program’s legislation of a number of punitive actions proposed for E.U. industries whose tie-ins with noncomplying U.S.-owned entities would be taken into account in the overall carbon calculations.

Nobody in the press briefing room gave a rat’s ass. Carbon emissions? Please. The vice president’s head was nearing the chopping block; noxious gases could wait. The pencils were sharpened and the keyboards were ready to hum.

“Mr. President. Do you think it’s wise at such an early stage in your presidency to risk losing the trust of the people who put you into office?”

The president answered, “Would it be wise? Of course it wouldn’t be wise; it would be stupid.” Hyland squinted briefly in the direction of the ceiling. “May I ask
you
a question, Jerry? Are you calling the president stupid?”

He got his laugh and moved on to the next question. It was a reworking of the previous one. Hyland was sufficiently skilled in offering many words to say practically nothing, and for the next thirty minutes of the press conference this is largely what he did. On the continually rebounding topic of Vice President Wyeth, Hyland voiced concerns about “the hearsay” and “the speculation” flying about. He declared, several times, that he had yet to be presented with any credible information that any of the allegations against his VP were true.

“If the American people want their president to start making major decisions about the running of the administration based on the prattling of blogs and rumors and, can we say, a little too much breathlessness in some corners of the media, I’m afraid they’re going to be disappointed. But I don’t happen to think this is what they want.”

He continued, saying that he would maintain full support for any member of his staff and his administration until such time as that person was shown to have conducted himself in a manner inconsistent with either the law of the land or the ethical standards set by the president from day one in office. Hypothesizing, he said, was a waste of precious time.

“I am not being paid by the American people to spend my time playing
what if
. There is plenty of
must do
to be done.”

A perfect exit line, as he and his chief of staff had determined prior to the press conference.

“Thank you.”

The reporters barked questions at the president as he left the briefing room, but they remained unaddressed. As he headed back to the Oval Office, casting a rueful eye at a portrait along the hallway of Andrew Jackson’s dainty little thug’s face, Hyland said to his chief of staff, “I don’t like this sort of holding maneuver, Ron. We advance nothing but the clock. They’ll probably grant me that one, but we can’t go playing Wiffle ball with them like that again. I want to know, damn it. When does Chris Wyeth stand naked before me? I need to speak with the man. The last thing I can afford to do is to start playing Wiffle ball with myself.”

“No, sir. I agree. Wyeth has got to account for himself.”

“Vice President Wyeth, Ron.”

“Yes, sir.”

The pair had reached the president’s outer office. From her desk, Hyland’s personal secretary gave him a
tsk-tsk. “De ceci, de cela, va une petite manière.”

Hyland paused, amused. “Meaning?”

“Meaning they won’t be writing any songs about
that
press conference, sir.”

Hyland entered the Oval Office and strode across the presidential seal. Casting his eye out the window, he swung neatly around the large desk and into his chair.

“Ron, tell the vice president we’re having pecan pie tonight.”

The chief of staff was still many steps behind his boss. “Sir?”

“Pecan pie. Chris Wyeth gets physically aroused in the presence of pecan pie. What’s wrong, Ron, weren’t you on the campaign?”

The chief of staff searched his boss’s placid face. “Mr. President, am I missing something?”