Cheated By Death (2 page)

Twilight came and I grew tired of my own
company. Almost five months before, I’d moved into the apartment
above the garage —or the carriage house, as Richard’s grandmother
used to call it. The big house, where Richard and his wife, Brenda,
lived, was across the driveway. Located in Amherst, at the edge of
Buffalo, New York, it was less than an estate—but not by much. The
neighborhood screamed old money, although I think Richard was the
last remaining descendent of that wealth.

Using my key, I let myself in. Richard’s
kitchen was cavernous and gloomy compared to my snug digs. I hit
the light switch, grabbed a chair at the table, and thumbed through
the local section of that morning’s edition of
The
Buffalo News
to kill time.

The Police Blotter was full of the usual:
DUI, assaults, robbery, rape. The State round-up on the side column
caught my eye. A shooting somewhere in the Southern Tier. A one
paragraph story told where, when, and how, but not who, pending
notification of next of kin. Poor bastard. Just another deer season
fatality. Right?

Maybe not.

I stared at the paragraph until the words
began to blur. Something about the assemblage of facts bothered me,
but I didn't have time to think about it as Richard’s Lincoln Town
Car pulled up the drive. I tossed the paper aside. The door handle
rattled, and a few moments later a tired, depressed-looking Richard
came through the butler's pantry and entered the kitchen.

I looked over my shoulder. “Tough day?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s Brenda going?” I asked, as the car
backed down the driveway again.

“To pick up a pizza. You want to stay?”

“I’ll think about it.”

He dumped his coat on the back of a kitchen
chair and headed straight for the scotch bottle in a cabinet above
the sink. He plunked ice into an old-fashioned glass and filled
it.

“What happened?”

He took a deep swallow. “I had to tell a
woman that her three-year-old daughter’s brain tumor was malignant
and inoperable. We discussed radiation and chemotherapy, but that
sweet little girl is going to die.”

My gut tightened.

“Then not ten minutes later, an older woman
came in. Her son’s pit bull attacked her a week ago. She didn’t
think her health insurance would cover an emergency room visit, so
she made an appointment and waited. Between the infection and nerve
damage, she’ll probably lose the use of her hand.” He took a
shuddering breath, and then another long pull of the scotch.

I listened to Richard vent for another ten
minutes. He was always too hard on himself when he couldn’t help
his patients. We rarely talked about his own situation. Five months
before, he’d tended to a shooting victim. He hadn’t been wearing
latex gloves. Five tests for HIV had been negative. He had one more
to go before we could all breathe easier. After hearing about his
day, I couldn’t ask if he’d remembered to dig up information on my
father. Especially since I supposedly didn’t care.

Brenda came in at last, carrying a pizza box.
“Oh, good, I was hoping you’d be here. There’s no way the two of us
can eat all this.” She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, deposited
the pizza on the counter and went off to hang up her coat.

Richard and Brenda are a study in contrasts.
He’s tall, she’s petite; he’s into computers, she’s into antiques;
he’s white, she’s black. She would’ve made one helluva Boy Scout:
loyal, trustworthy and sometimes she’s got the gift of second
sight. Not like me, but she’s a kindred spirit. Most important,
she’s family.

When she came back, she took plates out of
the cupboard while I gathered a knife, spatula and napkins, and
Richard poured a caffeine-free Coke for her and got me a beer. We
sat at the table, each taking a slice of pizza.

“Did you tell him?” Brenda asked, and took a
big bite.

“I completely forgot,” Richard said. “I saw
your father today.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. “And?”

“When I told him who I was, he cried.
Apparently he has a lot of regrets.”

Was I one of them?

“He didn’t know you were back in Buffalo,”
Richard continued.

“How’d he know I ever left?”

Richard shrugged. “He knew you were in the
Army, and that you’d lived in New York. He even knew your wife was
murdered. He seemed to know more about your past than I do.”

I wasn’t sure how to react to that—anger came
close. “Then why didn’t he ever contact me? Why—?”

“I don’t know. But he wants you to call him.”
Richard reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper.

Spidery handwriting noted my father’s name,
address and phone number.

“He said he goes to bed around nine-thirty,
so if it isn’t convenient tonight you can call him after eight
tomorrow morning.”

I didn’t know
if
I wanted to call him,
let alone when.

I stuffed the paper in my pocket and turned
my attention to the pizza on my plate. Too many things crowded my
brain. Too many conflicting emotions threatened to choke me.

Richard and Brenda ate in awkward silence for
a minute or two. I sipped my beer and tried not to think. Finally,
Richard broke the quiet. “Peterson is out for the next six weeks.
They asked me to cover for him.”

Brenda looked up. “Oh, hell.”

“Who’s Peterson?” I asked.

“One of the clinic doctors. He broke his leg
rollerblading with his son over the weekend.” He looked at Brenda.
“I’m going to need some serious time off by Christmas. How about a
trip?”

“The Quebec Winter Carnival is in January,”
she said.

He nodded. “Maybe.”

Despite talk of vacation plans, the tension
seemed to grow. I pretended not to notice.

“Jeffy,” Brenda said casually. “Can you drive
me to the clinic tomorrow?”

I swallowed. “Sure. Is the car acting
up?”

She shook her head. “I’d just feel better if
I didn’t park it in the lot for a while. There’s been some
trouble.”

Richard looked up. “Oh?”

“The protesters,” she said offhandedly, and
got up to refill her glass, but even across the room I could feel
her anxiety rise.

“I thought things were better,” Richard said.
He turned his attention to me. “Eat.”

“I thought so, too,” she said, “but they’re
hanging in there. Today they started chanting like monks. It’s
unnerving,” she said, not facing him.

The two of them had started out volunteering
together at the hospital’s clinic, but since mid-summer Brenda had
worked several days a week at a women’s health center where the
occasional abortion was performed. That didn’t set well with some
of the area’s religious zealots. For Brenda to even mention it
meant she was concerned.

Though there hadn’t been a major incident in
Buffalo in the years since Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered,
Amherst still seemed to be the focus of the pro-life movement in
this part of the state.

“We’ve talked about this before. It’s time
you quit,” Richard said.

“What I do is important.”

He let out a long breath, and I wished I
wasn’t sitting in the middle of a discussion I’d heard too many
times.

“Yes, it is,” Richard agreed. “But you don’t
need the money, or the aggravation—especially now.”

She looked away. “It’s only until they find
someone to replace me.”

“Do you promise?” he asked.

“Yes.”

They both looked at me expectantly. “Sure,
I’ll take you to work. You’ll be safe with me.”

“Thanks,” Brenda said, sat down again, and
took another slice of pizza. I wasn’t even half way through my
first piece. “Eat up,” she said, “it’s getting cold.” The food
could never get as cold as the frost generated by that
conversation.

I thought about the slip of paper in my
pocket and felt colder still.

2

Brenda and I are more in sync than either of
us care to admit. Even without touching her, I could sense her
radiating an assortment of emotions: trepidation, anxiety, and
dread. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She glanced at me then looked away. “Sure.
Just a little nervous.”

“You didn’t tell us everything yesterday, did
you?”

Her voice was small. “No.”

I waited, and she exhaled loudly. “Somebody
egged my windshield last week. I had to pay extra at the carwash to
get it off.”

“Was it only your car?”

She shook her head. “Other cars in the lot
got it, too.”

“And?”

“And a couple of days later it was lipstick,
only that was on the doors and across the trunk.”

“What was the message?”

“
Death monger
, among others.”

“Is that it?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.

Her mouth tightened. “I think somebody
followed me home the other night.”

Brenda wasn’t the paranoid type. My fingers
gripped the wheel. “What kind of car?”

“I don’t know, but it was blue.”

“Have you seen it again?”

“No, but I reported it to the heath center’s
security. They said to be careful. That’s why you’re driving me to
work. Did you call your father?” she asked, changing the
subject.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Richard thinks you should. So does
Maggie.”

“How about you?”

She shrugged. “You have to do what you have
to do.” I braked for slowing traffic and she looked at me with wry
amusement. “Do I detect a little hostility here?”

“After thirty-two years of indifference from
him . . . yeah, I’d say I feel hostile.”

Those thoughts evaporated as we approached
the Williamsville Women’s Health Center, and I could see why Brenda
was nervous. Ten or more men and women marched up and down in front
of the parking lot across the street—more than the requisite
fifteen feet from the drab, one-story brick building, just as the
law demanded. The first amendment allowed them to “sidewalk
counsel” anyone who passed by. Each carried a placard:
No More
Slaughtered Babies
;
Pro-Choice = Death For Babies; Baby
Butcher Shop
. Other signs bore grisly color photos of bloodied,
mangled fetuses.

I pulled my car into an empty space along the
curb and watched as a Toyota Prius approached the lot. The
protesters broke formation only long enough to let it in. The
driver got out of her car, briskly crossed the picket line,
ignoring the protesters’ haranguing voices. She hurried up the
concrete steps and yanked open the plate glass door and escaped
inside.

“Why hasn’t this been on the news?” I asked
Brenda.

She glanced at the crowd. “Because they’ve
been at it for weeks. But it’s still upsetting.”

“Why didn’t you say something about this
sooner?”

“I didn’t want Richard to worry. He’s . . .
.” She caught herself, seemed to think better of telling me. “He’s
got a lot on his mind right now.”

I let her words sink in. Something besides
his next blood test? “Anything I should know about?”

“No. Not right now.” She pawed in her purse
for her office keys. “He keeps trying to talk me into quitting. And
I can’t. Not yet.”

She’d sidestepped my question. Okay. Richard
had had a couple of bad days at the clinic. What else could be
bothering him?

I eyed the protesters’ angry faces and got a
flash of something: Panicked protesters and clinic security,
running footsteps, a bloodied hand.

“I gotta agree with Rich on this one. It
doesn’t look—or feel—safe to me. And if you want to give the poor
guy a break—”

“You’re a man. You can’t possibly understand.
Women deserve control over their own bodies, their destinies,
without being dictated to by a bunch of—”

“Hey, you don’t have to convince
me
,”
I said, jerking a thumb at myself.

She looked back at the crowd. “We don’t even
do that many abortions. We’re a
women’s
health center—for
all aspects of
women’s
health.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you feel you
have to be here.”

She stared at the dashboard. “Women used to
die from back alley abortions.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” I
said, losing patience.

The glare she turned on me could’ve blistered
paint. “My Aunt Vonnie died from massive infection after her
football playing, big-man-on-campus boyfriend took her to some jerk
with a rusty coat hanger.”

The venom in her voice made me wince. “When
was this?”

“A year before Roe vs. Wade. She was almost
sixteen.” Brenda looked away, but I saw her lower lip tremble. “I
wasn’t even born. I only know about her because her sisters loved
her and kept her alive with their words—their memories. But she’s
dead—and it’s only her family who cared.”

“I’m sorry, Brenda.”

“Yeah, me, too. For all the Vonnies—past, and
future, if these damned protesters get their way.” She reached for
the door handle. “I have to go.”

I touched her shoulder. “I’ll pick you up at
four.” She nodded gratefully. “Want me to walk you to the door?” I
added.

She shook her head. “I won’t let them
intimidate me. See you tonight.” She got out the car and hurried
past the crowd of protesters, never making eye contact, ignoring
the jeers and taunts. I waited until she made it safely inside the
building.

She wouldn’t admit it, but she was already
intimidated.

I studied the odd assortment of people
marching up and down the sidewalk, wanting to memorize each face,
and realizing the futility. But I could photograph them. I’d use
black and white, grainy film. Catch them in the act of grimacing,
sneezing, anything embarrassing. How childish of me.

One three-point-turn later, I was on my way
back home to get my Nikon. Maybe none of these protesters were
violent, but plenty of their counterparts in other cities were. The
idea both sickened and fascinated me.