Best Friends (53 page)

“Oh no, no.” The policeman smiled.

“What the hell for? You're going to execute me and what the hell for?”

“Mommy, she said a bad word.” Barbara this time.

“Will you get them out of here, Peter? Take them upstairs. Just get them out!” Sally said. Teresa was already scampering toward the stairs, carrying Linnea in her car seat.

“You don't think I'm owed something?” Virginia turned on Sally. “Thirty-five years with that man, and you know what? He ruined my life! When I met him, I was a clerk in a drugstore, and he came in and asked me if I wanted to be a secretary. I thought it was a step up. I thought I'd never have to do stocking. I thought I'd do typing or something. I thought I'd answer the phone!” She turned to the policeman. “You know what she does? You know about her family business? Oh I know she looks all nicey-nice, but you know what she does? She's a pornographer! She's got computers upstairs filled with two thousand naked people. Doing everything you can think of. Things you couldn't think of! What do you think of that?”

“Adult entertainment,” Sally said in a small voice. “It's adult entertainment.”

The policeman glanced at Sally, then dropped his eyes quickly.

“Peter,” Sally repeated lowly. “Please get the kids out.”

“I went to Catholic schools!” Virginia burst out.

The policewoman seemed to wince, then she, too, looked at Sally.

“Catholic schools with nuns!” Sally had gone to Catholic schools too.

Teresa reappeared behind Peter and tried to grab the twins. One of them ran into the family room, and Teresa followed. Peter scooped up the other one.

“We understand this is a shock to you,” the policeman said. “Come with us to the station, and this will all go nice and easy.”

Virginia stared at the policeman. “I know things that could curl your hair.” Her voice rose. “I didn't take anything I wasn't owed ten times over!”

I thought of her standing in the drugstore, wearing one of those smocks like the drugstore ladies of my childhood used to wear, and I understood that her words had been exactly true: to become a secretary would have been a step up. I thought of my father, his pride in working for doctors, his shabby suits, the doctor's wife who criticized his clothes. What had he ever given his employers but time and respect? And he didn't even earn enough to dress himself properly.

“My father was an embezzler,” I said, leaning toward Virginia. “I understand.” I knew that saying this betrayed Sally, but out of human decency, I had to let Virginia know.

“Understand?” Virginia hissed at me. “Understand? You'll never understand. You know what Sid Rose did to me? He made me watch things. He made me look at things. I worked for him for years and I lost everything, I was like a—like a robot. I thought everything he said was right. I thought everything he did was okay. You can't pay a person enough for something like that. He took my life!”

Well. But she had colluded: the money had to have been better with Sid. And Sid was fun; he was an interesting person who liked her, who appreciated her work, who let her do more and more. A glance passed between the two policemen, and I understood that their sympathies were shifting: this woman was becoming irrational, a threat. The policeman stood. “Come on now, Mrs. Luby. You understand you're under arrest, anything you say can and will—”

“And not just my life! He took his son's life too! Ben's life. Her brother!” Virginia pointed at Sally.

“Get the cuffs,” the policewoman murmured.

“He killed his own son!” Virginia screamed. “He told me! You believe that? What kind of man would kill his own son? That kind of man.”

“She's hysterical,” Sally said to the officers, and the Hispanic officer responded with a you're-not-kidding look. Then: “Peter! Do I have to do it myself?” Peter was glued to the spot, eyes wide, Ezra and Barbara beside him.

“You can't do this to me!” Virginia was shouting. “I'm almost innocent!” The officers were on either side of her, gripping her by her upper arms.

“Come on, Ez,” I said, reaching for his hand. “Come on, Barbara.” I thought I could take them out the back door, where they wouldn't have to hear this, but Virginia was kicking at the two officers, and we couldn't get past.

“You're crazy to come out after me. You need to go after Sid Rose. You need to take Sid Rose out of his electric bed and put him in the electric chair!”

The officers lifted her two or three inches off the floor, holding her suspended in the air.

“Oh, my God,” Sally said, clamping her hands over her ears. “I can't believe this.”

“You open the front door, ma'am, we'll get her right out.”

“I'm sorry about this,” Sally said. “I appreciate your coming.”

“You're as bad as he is!” Virginia shouted. “Little mother, what kind of little mother are you?”

“ ‘Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself,' ” the policeman said.

“Is that Shakespeare?” Sally asked in astonishment. She held the front door open, the grass a dazzling green, the inground sprinklers spritzing.

“You want Shakespeare?” Virginia shouted, swinging her feet from side to side in the air, aiming at her captors. “ ‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune . . .' ”

The cops laughed. She was no match for them. She seemed to be shrinking in their arms. A scent of cut grass wafted from the lawn.

“ ‘A little madness in the spring / is healthy, even for the king,' ” the Asian cop quoted.

“Mr. Literature,” the woman cop teased. “It's not spring anymore, though.”

“I played Laertes in high school,” he said, addressing me and Sally.

They were truly a team. Virginia's feet were still working the air. I wondered if they'd charge her with resisting arrest.

“How dare you criticize my wife,” Peter said as Virginia was carried through the door. “You'd be working in a shoe store if it weren't for Sally and Sid.”

“I've never worked in a shoe store!” Virginia shrieked, twisting her head to look back at Peter.

“You can close the door,” the policewoman said. “We're fine.”

“Must be a weight lifter.” Peter nodded at the woman officer's back.

They carried Virginia wiggling and crying to the police car, pushed her in the backseat, and slammed the door. We watched through the windows on either side of the front door, Ezra and Barbara in front, eyes wide. As soon as Virginia got in the car, she disappeared, slumped down in her seat. The police partners opened their respective front doors and got in without hurrying, conversing over the top of the car.

I felt as if I'd witnessed an astounding thing, a woman in the middle of her lunch who finds herself accused and makes herself, for a brief instant, a tragic figure but then just as quickly becomes—at the hands of both herself and those around her—an object of derision. I wondered if this would be the shape of Virginia's whole life. I felt like crying. No one but me seemed to notice what she had said about Sid and Ben.

“Mommy?” Ezra asked. “Is Mrs. Luby a raving lunatic?”

 

 

 

I ACCOMPANIED SALLY that afternoon on her daily visit to see Sid.

He was actually fatter, from the tube feeding, and he lay flat on his back, his electric bed—which sloshed if you pressed on it—making its humming noise. He wasn't responsive. His mouth was open, and he stared into the air. Still breathing.

I rubbed the bottom of his foot from heel to big toe and his toes fanned, a classic brain-damage sign.

“Hi, Daddy!” Sally said. She stood beside the bed and held his wrist as she told him about Virginia and the police, how that was taken care of and he didn't need to worry. Then she kissed him on his forehead and marched right to the nursing station to tell them that his pulse rate was eighty-four.

“Okay,” the nurse said warily.

“That's really fast for him,” Sally said. “It's not normal.”

“Sally, the normal pulse rate is between sixty and a hundred,” I said. “You're allowed some variation.”

“He's never over eighty,” Sally said. He's always in the sixties or seventies. Would you call Dr. Stevens, please?” Dr. Farouk did not come to nursing homes.

“It's not our policy to call a doctor for a normal pulse,” the nurse said.

“Then I'll call him.”

“Okay, okay. Let me check the pulse myself, and then I'll call the doctor.”

 

 

 

“ HE SAYS NOT TO WORRY,” Sally told Peter at dinner, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Even after you told him your father was always in the sixties and seventies?”

Sally shrugged.

“Mommy?” Ezra said. “Do you really have naked people in your computer?”

Sally laughed. “Ezra! Can you imagine? Why would I have naked people in my computer? That Mrs. Luby is crazy.”

Ezra smiled at his mother and nodded, but Barbara had her question: “Mommy, did Mrs. Luby know Uncle Ben?”

“Just a tiny bit, Barbara. A tiny bit.”

“Why did she say Grandpa killed him?” Barbara, despite her ornamental clothing, was a tough little girl: I'd seen her fall off a swing and angrily wipe off her bloody knee with a handful of grass before getting back on.

“She's a raving lunatic, Barbara,” Peter said. “Raving lunatics say crazy things.”

Barbara frowned.

“She didn't mean it the way you think, Bubbles,” Sally said. (Bubbles? I glanced at Barbara; she didn't look surprised.) “It was a figure of speech. She didn't mean it like, bop, you hit somebody on the head and it kills them. She meant she sort of blames Grandpa for Uncle Ben's getting sick.” Getting sick? I wondered what Sally had told them about Ben. “Because Uncle Ben had drug addiction, you know, and that's a sickness, and maybe Mrs. Luby thought he'd sort of caught that sickness from Grandpa.”

“Does Grandpa have drug addiction?” Barbara asked in a surprised voice.

“No, honey,” Sally said. “He never did.”

Barbara and Ezra looked confused. Their eyes met. No one asked any more questions.

“You won't see Mrs. Luby again,” Sally said in a blithe tone. “Don't worry. She's out of our lives.” I looked up, almost aghast at how quickly she'd dispensed of her—chop, chop, two quick vertical slaps—the same way she'd dispensed of Anaïs Nin, or Ben's girlfriend Helga, or Aunt Ruby. But that was Sally's way, and who was I, considering what she'd been through, to ask her to change?

 

 

 

“ I JUST WENT THROUGH the stuff from Daddy's, and I found a Havdallah box.”

“A what?”

“And it wasn't from that Judaica display, either. This was something he cared about. It's a box that you fill with spices, and you sniff it at the end of the ceremony that ends Shabbos. It's a Jewish thing. I didn't even recognize it. Peter figured out what it was. He remembered it from his conversion class.”

I was startled to hear that Peter had once taken a class, and that he'd learned anything in it.

“I took it to our rabbi, and he confirmed it. He gave me a copy of the prayer ceremony that goes with it. Isn't it interesting that Daddy kept that box? I mean, he certainly wasn't religious. Even though he grew up that way.” Sally's voice over the phone seemed unusually intense, the pitch a note or two higher than usual. “Peter got on the Internet and found the synagogue where Daddy was a bar mitzvah. He sent a message to the rabbi. I can't wait to hear back. People come to California and shed their pasts. It's accepted. It's a California tradition. But you can never shed your past, not really.”

His pulse had gone back down. He was fine.

No, you can never shed your past.

“ HOW IS EVERYONE?” Ted said.

“Fine. They're here with me right now. Mom's making spaghetti for dinner, and Aury and I are playing chess.”

“Chess! Is she any good?”

“Very good. She just castled.”

“I'm going to do a speech in Indianapolis in October. Want to meet me?”

“Your ten inches again?”

“Twelve inches, for you.”

I dipped my head and clenched the phone, stifling a smile. “You rogue.”

“And then I'll see you next week when we transfer Aury.”

“Good. Looking forward to it. Here she is.”

I handed the phone to Aury. My mother was standing at the stovetop looking at me, her wooden spoon frozen in the air.

 

 

 

THE NIGHT AFTER VIRGINIA Luby was arrested, Peter came downstairs and lured Sally and me up to his computer. “You've got to see this.” The old boyish excitement: a little gift for us. He left messages for people in France, Idaho, and Sri Lanka, then clicked to a live video monitor of a coffeepot at the end of a hall somewhere in England. “Look how small the world is now, it's tiny!” Peter said, and Sally recalled when she'd been married to Flavio and flown to Argentina for a wedding.

“I realized everywhere was just a few plane rides away,” Sally said, “and now everywhere's closer.”

Peter got out sheets of messages from Moscow, which he'd downloaded and printed, then sent a message to someone in the Ukraine. He asked me if I had anyone to send e-mail to, and I thought of Ted, but his computer was in his home.

“Oh Peter, you're finally center stage,” Sally said from the doorway. Down the hallway, Linnea started to wail.