Past Perfect (14 page)

“Ms. Schroeder,” I began. Having just spoken, I spotted a wedding band on her left hand. One second later I was worrying what it would do to my standing if she had taken her husband’s name; I would come across as Total Stranger Who Knows Nothing. Or what if she was one of those right-wing types who gloried in being called Mrs.?

“Sorry, this is the time United Parcel usually comes,” she said by way of explanation. “That’s who I thought …” It wasn’t as if her voice trailed off. She appeared to have lost the thought midsentence. Her accent was purely American.

“I apologize for dropping in on you like this,” I said, “but I couldn’t call ahead. My cell phone died and I didn’t have my charger.”

She nodded, though I wasn’t sure she’d absorbed what I’d just said. “I know this may sound very pushy, but I worked with …” The words your father were just about to emerge when it occurred to me —in one of those odd, sixth-sense moments —that she might not be his daughter after all. Wife? Well, he’d been spirited out of Germany with his parents to spend World War II in Moscow, so the youngest he could be would be late sixties. Granted, Ohio style wasn’t my area of expertise, but I began thinking she could be married to him because her coiffed hair and diamond ear studs were more rich man’s country club wife than daughter.

“I worked with Mr. Schroeder when he first came to this country,” I continued, “and he was incredibly kind to me.” Hopefully he wasn’t a first-class prick. In order to project benevolence, I tried to conjure up a vision of a Manfred transformed from tough Stasi hunk into a cheery, beery Midwesterner patting me on the head in a paternal manner. I failed. “I’m only in Cincinnati for the day,” I went on, “but it would mean a great deal to me if I could thank him personally.”

Though I’m generally the sort of person babies smile at, dogs wag their tails at, and strangers confide in on the M7 bus, I wouldn’t have been shocked if she slammed the door in my face or shrieked, Diiiick!! Call 911!!! At that instant it also occurred to me I had no fallback position, no second lie to tell if this one failed. But she neither slammed nor shrieked. Her blue eyes grew teary. She swallowed and in a choked voice said, “Please come in.”

She led me into a room with a ceiling so high it could have accommodated the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, and so wide in every direction that the Rockettes in their Santa outfits could have spread out for line kicks. Because there was a huge Persian rug on the floor and a lot of Louis the Something chairs and a couch, a giant mirror in a gilt frame, and an oil painting of either a fat old lady in a white gown or a medieval pope, I assumed it was the living room. Except we then took a right into the living room, and I realized we’d passed through … I guessed what would be termed the reception hall.

This was a new level of money for me. Ever since I could remember, my parents had been well-off. A few of their friends —as well as a couple of the families of some of my day-school classmates —were what is so delicately referred to in Manhattan as obscenely rich. Still, I had never seen anything like this living room. I was pretty sure it was Gothic style. Anyway, the ceiling was vaulted and there were lots of tall, arched windows on either side of a fireplace that had some nasty faces —though not quite gargoyles —and a coat of arms carved into its black wood mantel. Was this the home Manfred Gottesman had dreamed of growing up in as a good little commie boy in Moscow?

“Please,” she said, motioning to one of the two giant couches that flanked the fireplace, “have a seat.” She sat beside me, about a foot away. Her back was straight, not resting against the cushion; her knees and ankles were together and angled sideways, a ladylike posture more in keeping with characters in 1930s movies than in women of my generation. “Forgive my manners. I’m Dick’s wife, Meredith.”

“I’m Daisy Green,” I said.

“And you knew Dick when he first came here?” She leaned toward me as if she wanted to catch my answer the minute it came out. I noticed the skin on the bottom of her nose was rough and red. I added that to her teary eyes and knew it wasn’t hay fever. Troubled, I decided.

“Yes, I worked for the organization that brought him over. You know, I doubt if he’ll remember me, but at the time, I was so unhappy. At the end of my rope over some guy.” (Both the name Daisy Green and her backstory came from a character in the novel Spy Guys who had never made it into the show because the actress who was going to play it got a feature film offer and Oliver decided to cut the character and use the money for an assistant to the location scout.) “I lost some of your husband’s papers and couldn’t get my act together. He could have reported me, probably should have. But instead he was so decent and sympathetic — “ I was going to mention something again about thanking him, but that very moment, Meredith Schroeder began to sob.

“Forgive …” she managed to say.

“Is there anything I can do?” She didn’t answer. Her hands were over her face. I reached over and patted one and gave it a little squeeze. She lowered her hands and gave me a small smile. “Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “My husband is always saying I’m too emotional.”

“Mine does too,” I said.

Actually, Adam never said that outright. At the beginning of our marriage, I even thought it was one of my charms: designated emoter. Anyway, my response must have struck some cord because she patted her eyes dry with her fingertips and smiled. With her deep dimples, light blue eyes, strawberry lips, expensive clothes, and a tan like golden velvet, Meredith looked like an ad for the American Woman. After a childhood as a war refugee in Moscow and then a life in East Germany, the man who became Dick Schroeder seemed to have embraced not just the spirit of capitalism, but its embodiment.

“Is something wrong with Dick?” I asked softly.

“He’s in the hospital.” She shivered and, hugging herself, rubbed her upper arms, seeming to have forgotten her Pucci sweater. Sometimes it pays to schlepp a ten-pound hobo bag when you’re taking a trip. I reached into it and pulled out a shawl I’d brought along for the flight, though I could have given her an iPod with a lot of Phil Collins and Dire Straits I’d recently downloaded, or a science fiction paperback about some ensign who was an agent of Imperial Terra. Even half a Snickers. Meredith just sat there, so I stood and draped my shawl around her. “Oh thank you. Such a nice wrap.” She drew it tighter. It really wasn’t nice: pale pink and so thin it looked like some sort of used medical dressing. I’d gotten it from a street vendor for ten bucks, which included a laughable label that said 100 percent cashmere. “All of a sudden, I just got chills,” she apologized.

“I’ve come at a bad time,” I said. “I feel terrible, not being able to call, dropping in on you like this.”

“No, please. I’m glad for the company. He’s in intensive care and was having tests all morning. I can’t go to see him until two o’clock, and they only let me stay for ten minutes at a time. Then I have to wait again until three. Would you like anything? A bite of lunch?”

“No, thanks.”

“Really, it’s no problem. I have someone in the kitchen who can do it.” I shook my head. I knew it made sense psychologically to break bread with someone you want to ingratiate yourself with. But Meredith seemed overwrought, and she definitely looked like the type who, unlike me, would lose her appetite when stressed. I didn’t want to sit there chomping on a turkey sandwich in the kitchen while she either wept or excused herself and went upstairs.

Also, I was trying to figure out what to do now that one of my only links to Lisa and our mutual past was tubed up in intensive care. Granted, trying to see Dick Schroeder had been a long shot, but now I’d have to wait until he got better. If he did. Also, Meredith’s tears looked real to me. It would take a first-rate actress to shiver so convincingly. Even though she was around my age, I was getting the urge to mother her. I wanted to hug her and pat her head the way I used to do for Nicky when he’d get hurt or upset: It’s okay. Come on, it’s going to be all right.

“Did he ever talk about the old days?” I asked.

“Not really. He once told me, ‘You have no idea what hell it was living under a communist regime.’ He said President Reagan was so right when he called it the evil empire.”

I had to give Dick credit. No wonder he didn’t want to talk about the past: living in a totalitarian state, working for that government, and spying for us. “Did he tell you what it was like when he first came here?”

“Not too much. Mostly how shocked he was at the abundance of everything and also at the freedom to read criticisms of the government.” She adjusted her watch, trying not to let me see she was looking at the time. “I remember something else he said … that the refugee organization that brought him over really had wonderful people. They even gave him a couple of thousand dollars to help him get started in business.”

“Well, all of us did our best.” Manfred-Dick must have done something extremely wonderful to have gotten here in the first place, and I wondered how many tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars he was given, and for what. It might have been in my report, but I couldn’t remember. “Would you like me to drive you to the hospital?” I asked.

“No, that’s all right. We have a driver.” She glanced at her watch. I assumed the trip to the hospital wasn’t that long, because she finally leaned back against the cushion of the couch, slipped off her high-heeled slides, and tucked her feet beneath her.

“Has Dick been in the hospital long?” I asked.

“Four days.” Meredith flattened her lips and blew out a long, slow breath.

“I bet it feels like four weeks.”

“It does.”

I was trying to think of a way to ask what was wrong with him, when she said, “They call what he has FUO, fever of unknown origin. He was just tired at first. I begged him to stay home. But you know what men are like.”

“Sure. He went straight to work.”

“Yes. And then one night he came home looking gray. Positively gray. And I put my wrist on his head. He definitely had fever. And I didn’t like his breathing. I told him, ‘I’m taking your temperature right this minute.’ Then I couldn’t find the thermometer. He said, ‘I’ll take a couple of Advils and get a good night’s sleep and I’ll be better.’ But … you know Dick, I mean, he’s older than I am by a lot and I worry. He was a little boy in Germany during the war and had rheumatic fever and didn’t get enough to eat.” I wondered if Meredith knew the truth about how his family had been taken to Moscow and protected, and she was just giving me the official biography. But maybe she too had gotten the cover story. “How was he then?”

I had no way of knowing whether she knew of his past as an Agency asset. Did she look at me and think, Hmm, old CIA hand or a nice social worker from some do-good group? “Do you mean how he appeared healthwise?” She nodded. “Fine.” I decided to take a chance and added: “A little on the thin side.”

She laughed, and it had a tender sound. “Trust me, he’s not like that anymore. But it’s all meat and potatoes. He’s the second biggest candy distributor east of the Mississippi, and he never even takes a Lifesaver. If he has dessert once a year it’s an event. Except since he’s had this, he’s lost a lot of weight.”

“They have no clue as to where this fever came from?”

Meredith shook her head. “No. They’ve taken a million tests, asked me where we’ve gone on every vacation for the last… I don’t know, five years. They keep wanting to know ‘Mexico?’ ‘China?’ And I keep saying no, we’ve never been to Mexico or China. I have the chief of the infectious diseases department on the case and he consulted with NIH. They’re getting back to him. And the rheumatologist and the hematologist are at a loss so far.”

“Is the thinking that it might be some kind of an infection thing, not some side symptom of another disease?” I didn’t want to say “cancer” because it might frighten her. If I called my mother, she could probably list another ten or twenty horrible possibilities.

“The tests say it’s an infection. They even tested him for HIV, which I told them was ridiculous, but they said they had to. Nothing. They finally narrowed it down. It’s not viral or bacterial. Now they’re saying it’s a fungus.”

“Is he conscious?” I asked. I was getting nervous that any second she would decide she’d been nice enough to me and make it clear it was time for me to leave. Not that I really thought there was anything to learn by staying, but going would be so final.

“Yes, but he’s so weak. He can’t even talk anymore. All he can manage is a whisper.” I murmured how sorry I was. “It’s funny, he doesn’t seem to be at all fearful or worried that something’s going to happen. The only thing that upsets him is me. I mean the strain on me. He says things like, ‘I don’t want you coming here every day,’ or, ‘You’ve been at the hospital too long. Go out and buy yourself something beautiful from me.’“

“That’s one of the nicest things I’ve—” I didn’t get to finish the sentence because a maid in an actual uniform —the black dress with a white apron —came into the room and said, “It’s Dr. Morvillo on the phone, Mrs. Schroeder.”

A person with good manners might have excused herself at this juncture. I didn’t. After Meredith left, I paced the length of the living room and by the time I sat down again, I’d walked the equivalent of a half marathon. On the wall opposite the fireplace, beside a pair of French doors, there was a formal portrait of Dick and Meredith. Formal, not just in the sense of it being an oil of her seated in one of their Louis chairs with him standing behind her, but with them in evening clothes. He wore a tuxedo and shirt with a wing collar, she a strapless pink gown and diamond necklace. With his white hair and her comparative youth, it would have looked like father-daughter night at some symphony benefit, except his hands, fingers splayed, were spread over her shoulders as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her skin.

From what she had said about meat and potatoes, I’d expected to see a stout burgher type, like photos in travel brochures of those schmucks in lederhosen. But unless the artist did him a favor, he was simply solidly built. Good-looking too, an elegant, older version of the man in the photo Lisa had shown me years earlier. His dark eyes and black eyebrows contrasted with his thick hair, now a sugary white. The serene expression on Meredith’s face told me she was not one of those young wives of older men who had to fake it.