All the Things You Are (28 page)

‘That's totally … yes, that's right. That's right.'

Danny is breathing deeply, almost moved; there are tears in Dave's eyes too, he thinks, although he's not going to draw attention to them. He's not done yet.

‘If only we had talked about it before,' Dave says, as if now it's too late.

‘Gene was the one who wanted me to take the blame,' Danny says carefully, ‘but that's not the whole story. At least, not the way Ralph saw it.'

Dave nods again, and then exhales, his head to one side, and makes the face again, the raised eyebrows, the grown-up skepticism, the manly assessment: the shit we've seen, after all this time, what are you gonna do?

‘I guess it's like that Japanese film, everyone remembers a slightly different version of what happened. The reality doesn't change, though,' Dave says.

Which is to totally misunderstand that Japanese film, Danny thinks. Not to mention the fact that either you threw a fire bottle or you didn't. But it didn't matter, Dave was on his side, and Ralph had told him what
he
saw, and that led straight to Gene. He didn't need to have a debrief with Dave, didn't need to compare notes or seek closure.

‘If only we could have talked about it,' Dave says again, and looks him in the eye, and there's something about the intensity of his gaze that takes Danny aback. As if it's too late now. What does that mean? Danny talks briskly about Jonathan Glatt, and Dave laughs and says phew, missed a bullet there, Gene got them out in time, and Danny says Gene didn't get him out in time, and Dave just stares at him.

‘How much did you lose?' he says.

Danny shakes his head, gives him the you-don't-wanna-know look.

‘So it's Gene? You think it all points to Gene?'

‘What Ralph told me would confirm that, all right.'

‘And what, do you think Gene killed Ralph? Had him followed to your house or something? Man, this is pretty wild stuff, Dan.'

‘I don't know … I can't think of any other way it happened.'

He doesn't want to talk about the blackmail. Even now, he feels ashamed of himself, that he let it go this far. He has to get out of here, has to confront Gene Peterson, has to finish this once and for all. Dave's cell phone rings again; again, Dave stops the call. Danny gestures to the phone, indicating that he understands Dave is a busy man and he's taken up enough of his time. But before he can move, Dave stops him in his tracks.

‘There's something … I never thought it was anything, really, I mean, these things happen, and you and … Claire, isn't it, that you're married to? Measure of how far we've drifted apart, that I have to reach for your wife's name. I'm divorced, no children, for the record.'

‘I know that,' Danny says, and it is something he remembers, although please don't ask him anything about Dave's ex-wife, he's almost certain he never met her.

‘Well, I think it was when you and Claire were broken up, you met at UW and then split up and then got back together, I seem to remember.'

‘That's right.'

‘Well. I always thought it was kind of an uncool thing to have done, and maybe it's the reason none of us were invited to the wedding …'

‘We didn't have a wedding. We're not … I mean, not officially, but we declared ourselves to be … we're not legally married.'

‘How come? Or are you just Madison through and through, Dan?'

‘Claire didn't want to. She's … she was adopted as a young child. And she didn't want to know about her birth parents, who they were, she didn't want to delve into any of that. She loved the Taylors, they were her adoptive family, and she didn't see why she had to complicate things. She said … she didn't need a piece of paper to tell her who she was, or what she was.'

Dave smiles. Is there something cynical, or satirical, bordering on cruel, about the way he smiles? Right at that moment, Danny doesn't know. And because of what Dave Ricks says next, the smile disappears from his mind as if he had never seen it in the first place. But in time, it will come back to him, and stay with him. It is a smile Danny will remember for the rest of his life.

‘“We don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall,”' Dave says, as if it's a quote from something. Claire would know, Danny thinks. ‘But look, and maybe this gives Gene another reason to have it in for you. Back then, when you guys were split up, Gene bumped into Claire in the city. And they spent the night together.'

C
harlie T and Angelique have strolled up and down Cambridge's main street for what must be half a dozen times as the afternoon light dimmed. They bought a glazed salad bowl at Pat's Pottery; they looked at an exhibition of paintings by ‘emerging artists' at the Jordan Gallery, and at nineteenth-century creamery equipment in the Dairy Museum, where Charlie T bought Angelique some frozen ice cream and they sat on a bench on the sidewalk so she could eat it. Every second spoon she gave to Charlie, and she rubbed his arm with her hand and nestled her head against his shoulder from time to time. After that, they stopped by the realtor's and picked up a bunch of brochures, and looked at old clocks and mirrors and chairs in two antique stores. In Janine's Quilts, Angelique found a
Goodnight Moon
-inspired quilt and place mats, and in The Gingerbread House, they bought German Lebkuchen cookies. In The Great Outdoors, Angelique made Charlie T get a red plaid coat with a fleece lining and a Wisconsin Badgers baseball hat. Now they are in Cindy's Country Bake, drinking milky coffee and eating cinnamon scones and smiling into each other's eyes.

It's an act, but it isn't all an act. This is what normal people do, Charlie T kept thinking – at least, normal people who wear sweaters and have weekend places and drive European cars. Rich normal people. Normally Charlie T would hang out in the nearest dive bar, or the strip club his girlfriend would be working in later that night, or already, depending on the town. But Cambridge didn't have a strip club, and his girlfriend wasn't a stripper, she was a nurse. Scratch that – his fiancée.

He had asked her on the trip up to Madison, and when they turned east on to the 12-18 headed for Cambridge, she said yes. He didn't know for sure if it was exactly what he wanted, and he knew for damn certain that he hadn't had his fill of other women yet, but there was something about Angelique, how, after he'd taken the Cowboy out, she'd stroked his thigh as he drove, not as a sex thing, more, she was proud of him. She spoke quietly of her plans, what she could expect as a nurse, what he could expect of her. Maybe she'd been fishing. Maybe she had manipulated him. The thing of it was, even if she had, he didn't mind. Even if she had, he
liked
it. He liked the idea they might be together. He hadn't realized he was lonely until she showed him there was an alternative to chasing after skanks.

Maybe she had set him up. And then, true to female form, made him wait: he proposes on the I-90, she accepts on the 12-18, an hour later. Silence in between. The longest consecutive silence he's ever witnessed from her. He found a radio station – he thought this was class, actually, a radio station that played all those old songs out of musicals and that, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra and the like singing them, the songs his grandparents danced to. And of course, wasn't every single one a love song? ‘The Tender Trap'. ‘I'll Be Seeing You'. ‘All The Things You Are'
.
He thought he heard her suppress a sob once, thought he caught a sidelong glimpse of her wiping a tear away. Didn't look around. Didn't say a word. Kept his eyes on the road. ‘Let's Face the Music and Dance.' He thought of his grandparents, of his ma, of his sister and her kids. Angelique always mentioning her mother, her aunts, her sisters. Family. That's what it was all about. The future. Nearly shed a tear or two himself, so he did.

Mr Wilson still hadn't delivered an address when they were on the outskirts, so they rolled into town and spent their romantic afternoon. Charlie isn't a hundred percent convinced antique stores and art galleries are where he'd like to spend all of his afternoons; maybe he'd be more the champagne-on-a-yacht type of rich guy. But it's not all romance. Angelique's idea, that they should look like they're thinking of moving here. It's a game couples play all the time, she says, visit a place and imagine you lived there. And people talk to you. And maybe you don't need the address.

‘Because,' she said, spooning ice cream into his mouth, ‘where do you think they're gonna be at five-thirty, six, once it gets dark?'

‘I don't know. At home?'

‘On Halloween?'

‘They know to stay out of the spotlight.'

‘They're already out of the spotlight, they live in a twinky little burgh like this. You think – what age are the girls, eleven and nine – you think they're not gonna want to go trick or treat?'

‘They're not?'

‘Only if they've got no self respect. Now put your coat on, and tuck your hair under your cheesehead hat, and try to look like you're not so goddamn gorgeous.'

So now they're in Cindy's, and Angelique is oohing and ahhing over the lakeshore cabins and the hillside villas in the realty brochures, and Charlie T is nodding away. Soon enough, Cindy sits down with them: Cindy, who has frizzy curls dyed the shade of an ear of corn and tied up in a batik scarf and gypsy hoop earrings and a figure and complexion that look like, once she's closed up Cindy's Country Bake, first she eats whatever country bake is left over, then she rolls across the street and orders the first of several at Andrew's Bar.

‘You folks like the area?' Cindy says, and laughs, as if she has said something funny.

‘Who wouldn't?' Angelique coos. ‘Such a great place to bring up children,' she says, and ever so subtly brushes her belly with the palm of her hand.

‘Oh, well, that's just what we need. Prices went so high, it got that young families couldn't afford to move here,' Cindy says, and laughs again.

Angelique simpers a little in Charlie T's direction.

‘Well, I'm just a beauty therapist, but my fiancé is in risk management, I know, don't ask me either, he's explained a hundred times but I can't seem to keep it in my head. Just, whatever it is, it's in great demand these days. This must be our first day off for months, isn't it, sweetheart?'

Charlie T nods and smiles. He'd rather not speak, because then he'll get into a whole ‘Oh, I love your accent, are you from Ireland, I'm Irish!' sequence and the next time an American with a broad American accent tells him she's Irish because of her grandfather or she was on vacation there or she loves Colin Farrell he's going to say,
No you're fucking not
, which might not be much of a help with Cindy. In any case, in his experience a woman would much rather have you listen to her than have to listen to you.

Cindy is asking Angelique about the beauty business, and if she'd keep it up when they move, and Angelique says she was thinking about a spa, a wellness center, and Cindy says they have a couple already but that's an area that's growing, and Angelique says, alternatively, something in the childcare area.

‘And on that theme, my fiancé here said the town looks a bit like
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
this afternoon.' (Charlie had said no such thing.) ‘It's Halloween, but where are all the children?'

‘Well,' says Cindy, ‘my children are long gone now,' and she laughs an incredulous laugh, as if the notion she might have grown-up children is so unlikely. ‘And we raised them above the store, and as you say, there isn't a lot of opportunity to trick or treat on Main Street. But we used to take 'em round a couple neighborhoods. Sycamore Heights was one, but prices there went up and the kids left home and no new ones arrived, that's an example of exactly what we were talking about. The other one …' and at this point, she turns around to a younger woman with a ponytail and a bored expression who's working away on an iPhone. ‘April, where do the kids go at Halloween these days?'

April, sighing elaborately, raises her head slowly, but it's as if her eyes are a ton weight and don't want to follow.

‘Older kids, they go to Cedar Point on the north lake shore, or over to Billy's Roadhouse. Trick or Treat, the best is still Ripley Fields,' she drawls.

And April's eyes drag her head down towards her iPhone again.

Cindy laughs and nods her head.

‘Some things just don't change. If you want to see where we're hiding the kids of Cambridge, head on out to Ripley Fields.'

B
arbara doesn't want Donna to come around the houses with them when she and Irene are trick or treating. In fact, she'd prefer Donna to wait at the bottom of the road, as if she wasn't there at all and the girls were flying solo, like the teens Barbara thinks they are. But Barbara is still only eleven (‘I'll be twelve in March, actually') and in any case, there's Irene to consider. Irene, who competes pretty much at the same level as her elder sister for most of the day (if not remotely interested in boys or babies or the great wide world of sex which Barbara set herself the task of exploring and charting from the precocious age of about six). Irene, who you'd only know was the younger around half nine at night (while Barbara is campaigning to stay up as late as possible, Irene quietly finds her pajamas and curls up in bed, happy another day is done). Irene, who sometimes appears at Donna's side at five or six in the morning and snuggles in like a toddler with bad dreams, thumb hovering within reach of her mouth, still anxious, still the little pet. Irene would like Donna to come up to the doorsteps with them, just in case.

So the compromise is reached: Donna will wait on the sidewalk or in the driveway of each house, as long as she is in full view.