The Cavanaugh Quest (43 page)

Archie stood up, put his hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t apologize, kiddo,” he said. “Same thing occurred to me. I don’t know why either.”

We were walking back up the grassy hill when a man Archie knew came across the parking lot toward us, a bemused expression on his thick, flat face.

“Did you hear the news just now, Archie?” Archie shook his head. “Well, get ready for the shit to hit the fan again. Ford just granted Nixon a full pardon … Full pardon. That makes me more embarrassed to be a Republican than anything Dick himself ever did. Christ, a full pardon! Can you imagine the hay they’re going to make out of this?” He punched Archie’s arm. “Well, we live and learn.”

“You know it, Walter,” Archie said. “Then, you look at it from another way, we live and never learn a goddamn thing.”

“Say, now, you writers have a way with words,” Walter said, and trotted off toward the clubhouse to spread the word.

“We’d better go see Kim,” Archie said. “Do you mind if I come with you?” I didn’t and we climbed into the Porsche. I didn’t feel much like talking; my mind was turning over, trying to get a good purchase on things, and things kept crumbling in my grasp. It was the complexity of it that did it to me, the differences between appearance and reality being so pronounced, so awful. Just beneath that tranquil surface, the scuttling and clawing went on and on, the monster was growing hungry and itchy. It was like the rats, all right, taking up residence long ago, foraging in the garbage, making it their home. God only knew what else lay beneath the surface, scratching away at what Tim and Marty and the rest of them had built and valued, wanted at any cost to protect.

Somehow I’d become the bulldozer, ripping and scraping at the mound called 1974, with nothing whatever to gain. I’d become the machine, tearing the seams, gouging away at time, opening it all up and spilling out the rodents of forty years ago … Forty years of garbage and crap that had nothing to do with me, smashing it up and scattering it around, all the vermin and creatures of filth blinking in the light, vague and unsure and newly wakened, terrified by me. I had set them running again, the disease carriers, and the poison was out. And it was none of my business.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Archie said.

“What doesn’t surprise you?”

“Ford pardoning Nixon. And people worry about the younger generation …” He sniffed contemptuously.

It seemed to me that it all went together beautifully, my problems and the country’s. The monster was everywhere. And I didn’t know the half of it. There was another body spoiling in the heat but nobody knew it yet.

I
TOOK THE WRONG HIGHWAY
trying to beat the crush around Lake Calhoun on a big sunning and boating day and got caught in a traffic jam. There was a rescue-unit truck, an ambulance, and three squad cars and it took several seconds for me to realize where I’d gotten us. It was the Crocker construction site and the first thought across my consciousness was that the rat stampede had started. I reflexively jabbed WCCO to life since they’d be the quickest to comment but they were in the middle of celebrating 1942 and Dinah Shore began a slow, plaintive rendition of “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.”

Lights flashed, sirens screeched, and we waited in the heat with the top down. Archie swore quietly and tried not to notice the heat and the dust and the noise. There were cops all over the trailer area but nothing much seemed to be going on up on the hill. A couple of sanitation trucks stood mute and four white-coated workmen stood lazily on the hill, confident that the rats were under control. But something had happened at the site. I peered for a glimpse of James Crocker but he didn’t seem to be running things at the moment. Suddenly the traffic began to move and I headed on into town. Billy Daniels was singing “That Old Black Magic” on the radio and I was wishing I had some to use on Kim. My stomach had turned over to die and I wasn’t used to breathing through my nose. I was trying to rehearse in my mind what I was going to say to her. None of it was very graceful. By the time we left the car with a scowling doorman Sinatra was working on “The Lamplighter’s Serenade” and the sun had done the top of my head medium well.

She buzzed us in and when she answered the door, I suddenly remembered how lousy our last conversation had been, how hard she’d tried to make it nice, and how I’d left her. She shook hands with Archie, winked at me cheerily, which made my mission all the worse, and said, “My God, did you hear about Nixon?” She took us in to sit in the chrome-and-glass living room with bright explosions of flowers here and there. Archie gave it all an appreciative glance. He liked to observe women, was intrigued by the messes they got themselves into and the means by which they got themselves out; he just liked to keep his distance. She was wearing a robe of lemon yellow and the hair at the nape of her neck was still wet. A war game called Sniper was strewn about the floor, its distinctive box propped against a chair leg. She looked at the mess and smiled at Archie. “Sorry about this. It’s a new one and I was up half the night figuring out the rules … they really do approximate life’s complexities as best they can. It’s the complexity that makes it fun, of course, but you’ve got to be patient.”

“Patience is a rare quality in beautiful women, Miss Roderick.” Archie was trying to sound like an author: He’d seen a stack of three Fenton Carey paperbacks on an end table. But it was irritating me because of why we were there.

“Kim,” I said, cutting into their repartee, “we’re here for a reason. It’s pretty serious, Dad, so let’s get—”

Archie’s face clouded and he clasped his hands in front of him, leaning forward in his chair.

“We’re very much afraid that your life may be in danger,” he said, wisely choosing the best possible angle for a beginning. “Paul’s come into some troubling information and it’s going to come as a shock to you, I’m afraid. He’s going to tell you and I’ll do what I can to help. But remember, nothing is irreparable … from what Paul has told me about you, I’m sure you can handle it …” He looked at me.

“I went to Chicago yesterday,” I said, wondering where to look, “and talked with Patricia Wilson.” Kim’s eyes widened just a bit and the tip of her tongue appeared between her lips, waiting, anticipating. “She’s not dead and, the thing is, she’s not your mother. Rita Hook was your mother and we believe Carver Maxvill is your father.” I stopped, short of breath. Her hand jerked upward to cover her mouth. Her body seemed to shrink, the flesh pressing back against the bone structure. She made a soft sound, as if the breath were being forced out of her lungs by the pressure. Her face bore something in common with the night at the Guthrie when she’d been set upon by Harriet, but the anger was missing now, replaced by something a lot like fear, the fear that comes when you reach out for support and touch something that’s alive and moving.

“That’s the good part,” I said. I reached for her hand but she slid away.

“All right,” she said from far away, “what’s the bad part?”

While the air conditioning purred and blew cold air over our heads, while the flowers breathed and quivered and reached out in such desperately slow motion, while Archie clenched his hands on his knobby knees and the sniper waited quietly on his assigned hexagon, I told Kim that Larry Blankenship had been her brother unless she’d been victimized by the most bizarre coincidence of all time. I told her that the second most bizarre coincidence was their meeting, falling in love, marrying, and having a child, but it had apparently happened. I told her we believed Larry had learned the truth and it had been the final blow, had put the lock on his suicide. I told her that we believed the murder-go-round was balanced on the facts of her real parentage and her incestuous marriage.

She had gone white, mouth dry, eyes staring; her carefully constructed life lay in rubble around her tense bare feet, toes clawed into the carpet. She clasped herself with both arms, as if there were a fatal agony in her stomach. She said nothing. I could hear her trying to swallow. Her eyes had grown large, stopped staring, darted about the room. The sunshine made a mirror of the glass door to the balcony and a bottle of suntan lotion stood on another Fenton Carey leaving a greasy circle.

“Which brings us to the danger, Miss Roderick,” Archie said, clearing his throat. Her small dark head snapped toward him, nostrils flaring, eyes unblinking, like a terrified animal with its foot in a trap. Archie spoke very slowly, in contrast to the anxious spill of words from me. “Two things have us worried. Let me be very explicit. In the first place, when Larry Blankenship discovered the truth of your relationship—or so we believe—he killed himself. We don’t want this to happen to you … that’s why we decided to come here, to try to provide a buffer between you and the news, the
bad
news. Maybe we can lend some perspective …” He spread his hands and shrugged. “In the second place, if Carver Maxvill has come back to clean up on the old gang, he may very well be insane.
And,
if he’s insane, he may hold you as responsible for lousing up the end of his life … as the men who let you and Larry get married. A deranged mind is not predictable because no one can be sure how far gone it is and down what path … and you may therefore be in danger. For instance, now no one can surprise you with this information …” Archie smiled at her blank gaze, looked at me. “I’m very sorry, Miss Roderick,” he said, “but better you hear it from us than from someone who doesn’t wish you well—”

“You expect me to just believe this?” She turned from Archie to me. “You tell me this and expect me to just say okay, that’s interesting, and what else is new?” There was no feeling in her voice but it was high and skating.

“There’s a lot of evidence,” I said.

“What do you know about evidence? Tell me, what do you know about it? And who gave you the right? Oh—”   She stood up, clutching the robe around her slim body, quaking as if she had a bad chill. Her eyes took aim at me like twin rifle muzzles. “God, you made me trust you! Why? What have I done to you, for God’s sake?”

“I love you,” I said sappily. “I want to help you out of this mess … make sure nothing bad happens to you …”

She stalked to the window, staring at the happy sunny world outside and so far below, an act of bravado in the face of heavy fire. “Carver Maxvill!” She hissed at the glass. “My father … and my husband my brother …”

“That’s the way it looks,” Archie said.

“Was there another brother-and-sister combination at the orphanage,” I asked, “same age as you and your brother?” I was watching the back of her sleek head, the narrow shoulders beneath the yellow robe, her feet wide apart and braced as if she saw a tornado wheeling and spinning toward her.

“How the hell should I know? I was four years old, you idiot—” She shook her head violently.

“It fits, Kim,” I said.

She turned. “It fits,” she mimicked. “That’s what appeals to you, isn’t it? The fit. God, you’re so cold—” She finally cracked, her face and voice coming apart at the same moment, tears bubbling over and sobs convulsing in her throat. Without another word, she walked across the room and we heard the door to her bedroom slam.

I looked at Archie. He shook his head. “There was no easy way. But we had to tell her …”

I didn’t know if that was true. Did we have to? Was it any of our business? Maybe not. If I hadn’t spoken with Harriet Dierker the morning after Blankenship shot himself, I’d never have met Kim, never have fallen in love with her … But that was an if and to hell with them. It
was
my business. I was in love with her, regardless of how abnormal and loused up our relationship was. I had no choice; it was just a rotten piece of business.

I looked up at Archie. “There was gray fluff on the floor of Blankenship’s apartment,” I said. “Tim Dierker had been down in Blankenship’s apartment … I wonder if Tim told him the true story. It fits,” I added, unthinking.

Archie gave me a sour look. “Yes, Paul, it fits.”

We could hear her sobbing through the wall. It was as if someone were being tortured next door and we couldn’t stop it. I went to the kitchen and dug a couple of cans of Olympia out of the fridge and brought them back into the living room. I stepped out into the blast of heat on the balcony and drank deeply, looking down at the empty midday streets wavering behind the heat rising from the pavement. Two people in tennis whites batted the ball lazily and there was desultory splashing in the turquoise-blue pool. I heard a siren wailing. Almost any time of night or day there was a siren somewhere in earshot. Everybody had a crisis.

She had stopped crying when I went inside and I went to the bedroom door. Archie was in the living room drinking beer and reading one of his own novels. I knocked and she said I should come in. She was propped up against pillows, knees bent up, painting her toenails. The robe fell open so I could see the backs of her thighs disappearing beneath a fold of yellow terry velour. She didn’t look up and I sat in a small flowered reading chair.

“I’m all right now,” she said. “I’m probably in shock or something but I feel better. I cried it out. And I’m sorry for taking it out on you. I just haven’t had a lot of experience dealing with this kind of news … I can see how ancient rulers used to kill bearers of bad tidings.” She wielded the brush expertly, carefully doing each nail, bits of cotton between her toes to hold them apart. I gave a deep, inner sigh of relief; she was back, she wasn’t angry, and she wasn’t holding it against me. In the midst of all the compounded horrors, that was what I cared about. “Come here,” she said. I stood beside her and she finally looked up. “Let me kiss you.” I did and she held her mouth to my cheek and then went back to her task. She seemed utterly composed except for her bloodshot eyes. She seemed to sag beneath the robe; she had veered violently from anger and palpable hatred of me to this solemn acceptance, exhaustion. She was probably right: shock. She wasn’t quite taking in all the implications of what we’d told her but her strength was showing through.

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

“Do you think Maxvill will contact me?” she asked, ignoring my question. “Is that what you see happening?”