The Bluest Blood (18 page)

I swallowed hard.

“Weird,” Skippy said, “because I’ve heard our mothers talk about it, about him, since I was a kid. I mean, God, he was bad, but when I was little, even with those stories, he seemed like a desperado to me. I mean, the robberies, the fights, the gambling. And then, especially about when he was killed.”

By now, my air supply was dangerously limited, I was lightheaded and my vision blurred.

“Stabbed in a brawl. Awful. My mother’s never gotten over it. No matter what he turned out to be, and he turned out to be really rotten, he was still her little brother, you know.”

My mother, she who hired people to ferret out secrets, had an entire other existence. Wasn’t the person I’d known all my life. Things had happened to her. Indeed. She hadn’t been in that cocoon forever. A drunken lout of a husband who’d been murdered in a brawl, and a friend for decades who’d saved her and from whom she had no secrets. She’d even had
Skippy
as a part of her life.

She’d wanted to know—for my sake, she said—if Mackenzie had secrets and all the while, she was the one who did.

Her secret life. I thought the words, but when I saw my mother’s open face, her daily telephone updates to everyone she knew, her unofficial role of spreading all and any information up and down the Eastern Seaboard, my image of her spun and turned inside out.

Those calls weren’t meddling. They were
making sure.
Reassuring herself and the universe that everything was known and under control, trying to protect everyone from the chaos she’d known firsthand.

“So in an unofficial way—that’s what your mother said to me—we’re family. I wasn’t born then, but if I had been, I’d have been her nephew. Your cousin. If she’d stayed with Rolf.”

My mind, overtired, slowly shut down.

“You didn’t know,” Skip whispered. “You really didn’t. I’m—I’m sorry, then. I guess maybe I wasn’t supposed to…” His eyes widened in the familiar expression of terror. “You going to tell?”

“Tell? Tell what? Tell who—whom?”

“Tell her. That you know. I would never have—I didn’t think for a minute she wouldn’t have…”

I saw Peter Schlemiel’s shadow again. It’s what made him three-dimensional. Real. The darkness everyone had, according to Mackenzie. But even he would have exempted my mother.

“Are you?” Skippy asked.

She’d kept herself, her life, a secret. For whatever reasons—because she still carried the long-dead stigma of divorce, or because of a misplaced shame at defying her parents for the love of an unworthy man, for having her marriage self-destruct, for the humiliation of needing to hide from him. Whatever.

She’d kept it a secret that she’d made every mistake, done nearly everything she so vigilantly guarded against in her own children, particularly me. Because obviously, I was the most like her in my willfulness, my resentment of parental advice, my love of adventure. Or like she had once been.

It was her secret motive, I suspected, for excessive protective gestures. It was who she was, and it made me understand her better.

And it made me feel angry, left out, and also eager to talk about it with her, to work on the over-involvement in my life it had caused.

“I can’t answer that yet,” I said. “I really don’t know what I think or what I’ll do.”

Peter Schlemiel put his shadow hands on my shoulders and pulled me close.

Twelve

Talk about a blow upside the head. I sat in the coffeehouse a long while after Skippy made his reluctant retreat. I considered again the weight of secrets and wondered how else my mother’s had shaped her. And me.

My entire life needed to be revisited, reviewed, and reinterpreted. I wondered if my father knew. And if he didn’t, what that meant about the quality of their bonds.

I wondered until I was wondering in tiny, dizzying circles, and I made my way down the street, noticing the thinning crowds, the increasing cold, and my friend, Sasha Berg, who should have been out with Dr. Perfect instead of balanced on one exceedingly high heel in front of my entryway. Her other heel was up behind her, pressed against the brick wall. She looked like an ad for a B movie.

She also looked like the antidote to Skippy.

Sasha is easy to spot. It’s partly her six-foot height—before the heels—partly her voluptuous proportions, and partly her idiosyncratic wardrobe. Tonight, except for her spiky hair, she looked ready for The Hop in a Fifties powder-pink taffeta with a tight charcoal-gray velvet midriff and a pouf of a tulle crumb-catcher above the pointy bustline. And encasing it all, a ratty fur stole. Sasha had never heard of political correctness, or at least had not hearkened to its clarion calls.

But the closer I came, the less she looked like an antidote to anything. Her morose expression clashed with her purple shoes.

“Great outfit,” I said. She halfheartedly waved one high-gloved arm. I had a clue as to what troubled her, given the absence of Dr. Wonderful Perfection. And I worried where I’d find energy for Sasha’s problems this particular night. She was a high-maintenance friend, perpetually in romantic jams, and I was fresh out of spirit myself.

“Come on in,” I said. Silently, she complied. Very bad sign.

Once inside, I poured her a glass of wine before she asked for it, and one for myself as well. I deserved it. I needed it.

She sipped and sighed. “It’s been an interesting night,” she said.

I waited, then prodded. “Where is Dr. Wonderful?”

“Perfect Pete does not exist and never did.”

“Okay, so Imperfect Pete. Where is he?”

She shook her head. “I mean he really, truly, did not exist. Neither does the Landauer Trust he supposedly worked for. Neither did his medical degree. So I’ve been standing in front of your house—and where
were
you, by the way? While the cop’s away the teacher plays? But I’ve been here, freezing and trying to figure out who he was, because he wasn’t any of the above. So far, I’ve come up with a smile to die for, great buns, and an incredibly smooth con.”

“Can’t be,” I said. “Why would he con you?”

“There’s the humiliating part. He’s a
stupid
con man. An inept, second-rate one who doesn’t do his homework if he goes after a woman who doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. I think he liked my place and generalized from it.”

For some obscure legal or tax purpose, Sasha’s father had given her a condo during one of his frequent divorces. The walls around Sasha were those of a wealthy woman. Her wardrobe almost confirmed that. Like Tea Roederer’s, it was the eccentric garb of one who didn’t care about anyone else’s opinion. Only difference was, Tea found her togs at the couturiers and Sasha found hers in the Goodwill bin. Her life as a freelance photographer was hardscrabble.

She finished her wine. “I think his plan was that my rich friends and I would put together a tidy sum for the foundation. He thought it was cute that I was a photographer. Obviously considered it a lark, a rich girl’s hobby. I realize all this, you understand, only after the fact.”

“Are you perhaps leaping to conclusions?” Sasha was prone to professional gamblers, demolition derby drivers, flakes, and phonies. Dr. Wonderful had been her first appealing-sounding man in recent history. Maybe she was overreacting or picking at nits. “What makes you think he wasn’t for real?”

“Mackenzie.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mackenzie found stuff out for me. After I got suspicious and asked him to. See, one night, we passed an accident, and Pete got agitated when I asked if he wasn’t going to stop and help. I thought that was what they did, had to do, in fact. But he couldn’t even look in the direction of the crash. Seemed ready to puke at the idea of blood, and it made me wonder about the medical degree and the work. India has to be worse than I-95. So I asked Mackenzie to find stuff out.”

Mackenzie had researched somebody for her—had been a romantic detective, the sort my mother wanted to hire, and he hadn’t told me. Not a hint. I felt stranded outside the loop—all the loops—to the point of wanting to bawl. “He never said.”

“I asked him not to.”

Was that sufficient reason? Was it okay that he agreed?

“He called me tonight. Right before I went out with Dr. Fake. I went anyway, thought maybe Peter and I could talk it through, find the explanation. You know, computer error. Somebody else with his name. Somebody who’d stolen his credit card and was committing felonies under his identity. You read things like that all the time. So we went to this place in South Philly. Had spaghetti with calamari and all was well. A Chianti Classico and much talk about India and the foundation and the grant deadline. Which is when I broached—gently, I swear—the things Mackenzie told me. Peter was perfectly charming, laughed at the idea of his being a fake, excused himself to go to the men’s room, and hasn’t been seen since. Except by a busboy who spotted him bolting out the back door into the alley.”

She was in pain now, but she’d recuperate, and quickly. That was her talent and downfall as far as romance was concerned.

“I wasn’t convinced for a long while,” she said. “I sat there like a stupid cow and finished my pasta. But upon due consideration, after I’d paid the bill, I decided his failure to reappear might mean that the three warrants out for his arrest were, in fact, true. Because of the other women he bilked.” Sasha’s voice was low and soft, but that didn’t mean it was calm. “Other fiancées. Did I tell you that he’d asked me to marry him? Probably not, because I was keeping it secret, going to surprise you with it.” She sighed deeply. “Surprise,” she said.

“What a night. I can hardly believe it.” I poured us both more wine.

“What?” she asked. “Something else?”

I wanted to tell her about Detective Skippy, to match her story of a double life with mine. She knew my mother all the way back to when we were in high school, and my mother profoundly disapproved of high-risk, bad-girl Sasha.

But I didn’t want to play I Can Top That with Sasha’s pain. Besides, my mother’s half truths hadn’t put me in jeopardy the way Dr. Wonderful’s had done to Sasha.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just… I’m sorry about him. He sounded so fine.”

“The one I told you about was. Unfortunately, he was also imaginary.” She lifted her glass. “Let’s drink to the men we make up, even if there isn’t a chance in hell they really exist.”

We drank to the creatures of our imagination, but also, at my suggestion, to another Peter, last name Schlemiel.

“Who?”

I told her Mackenzie’s story: how it turned out that Schlemiel needed his shadow to be accepted as a human, and how people who have no dark side are two-dimensional and false.

She stood up. “You know,” she said, “that’s probably right. Wise, even. But it doesn’t make me feel one iota better. Let’s watch the late movie instead. And do you have chocolate in any form? Ice cream? Don’t bother with a plate. Just a spoon.”

“Two spoons,” I said. And that’s how we spent the evening until we both realized that we had in fact fallen asleep on opposite ends of the sofa. I offered to put sheets on the sofa and make Sasha’s snooze official, but she yearned for the pleasures and miseries of home and left.

*

Having napped during
the movie, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time, exhausted as I was. With every passing minute, I grew more tense, even though the next day was Saturday, which meant I could sleep in as late as I liked.

That thought must have finally relaxed me, because I was deeply into a mental filmstrip featuring my mother, Skippy, Dr. Wonderful, Mackenzie, and Mr. Rochester—all running hither and yon, wearing masks and saying “Shh!”—when the phone jolted me awake.

“Miss Pepper?” The voice was male and unfinished.

Jesus. A student. Was I late for class? Wait—it was dark—and it was Saturday. Or still Friday. “Who is this?”

“Jake.” He cleared his throat. I had the oddest sensation he was fighting tears. “Jake Ulrich.” He whispered, as if hiding from someone.

“Are you all right?”

“Not really.”

Of course he was not. Who would call his teacher when it was so dark if he were all right? I checked the clock. Four A.M.

“I wouldn’t bother you at such a—”

“What’s wrong?”

“Miss Pepper? You’re the one call they’ll allow me. I need help. I’m in jail.”

I held out the receiver and stared at it, because from fatigue or stupidity, I didn’t get or believe it. I thought it was an adolescent prank: get teach.

And I felt awful. My head banged and throbbed from a lack of sleep and an overdose of whatever hormones doubt, anxiety, confusion, and too much chocolate produce.

Then as I became more fully conscious, I realized what must have happened. Caroline Finney had gone to the police. She wouldn’t dawdle or debate or simply intend to do something the way I would. And with that dear old lady reporting her fears, the force of the law slammed down on the boy. I sat upright, ready for action. “Poor Jake,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll…”

What? Did they really allow only one phone call? And if so—why me? He’d need bail. Big bail—for a murder case.

Wait—did they grant bail for murder?

What was the phone-called person supposed to do? They never showed that part in movies. They cut to her or him charging into the station, knowing what to do.

And while we were on the subject—why me?

“I need an adult to, um, claim me,” Jake said.

“They’ll let you go? Where do people get bail? Do you need a lawyer?”