Lacy Eye (25 page)

“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me,” she said, and once again I felt startled by the profanity coming from my timid daughter's mouth.

I walked toward the desk, and she seemed to take a step back. “I was just looking for my birth certificate,” she said, looking flushed. “I thought I might need it sometime.”

“You could have just asked me,” I told her, trying to keep the tone out of my voice that would have communicated what I was thinking:
What's the
matter
with you?
“Besides, you know we keep those papers with Tom Whitty. They're not here.”

“Oh. Okay.” She stacked the papers she'd been rifling through, and stuck them back in the drawer. “Thanks, Mommy. I knew I could count on you.”

I managed to put the incident out of my mind, but two days later, when Tom Whitty called and said he needed to talk to me, I felt a flash of alarm. I was surprised he wanted to meet in person, because usually we conducted our business on the phone. We set a time during my lunch hour, at the coffee shop near the Stinson and Keyes office just outside the city. Though it had been three years and I'd never spent much time at Joe's office myself, I still didn't feel ready to go back to the place he had worked during most of our married life. I think I was afraid I would have been able to feel too much of his presence around me, at a time when it would have felt like a threat of some kind—in terms of the emotion it brought up—instead of a comfort.

Tom was sitting at a back table, and when I came over he rose to give me a kiss, turning over the piece of paper he'd been looking at. “Is everything okay?” I asked, trying not to betray my worry. I hadn't paid too much attention to the details of the financial crisis of the past few years, because Tom had assured me that though our account had taken a hit like everyone else's, Joe had built up a strong and smart portfolio over the years, and eventually it was sure to come back. But in those few moments before I sat down, I let my mind run to the what-if of having no money left to draw on, and conjured a childhood image of my mother sitting at the kitchen table on Humboldt Street with all our household bills open in front of her, putting her hand out to pick up one and then another, setting them down again with a dazed expression on her face. I had always chosen to believe it was because he couldn't stand this expression that my father resorted to the scheme that got him arrested and destroyed our family's name among the people who thought of him as a friend. “Blood from a stone,” my mother would say at such times. “That's what they want from us.”

When my girls were little, I used to tell them about what my father had done in such a way that they might feel sorry for him and understand why he'd turned to what I called “bad behavior” as a means of winning people's respect and admiration. I was careful to do this when Joe wasn't around, because he wouldn't have wanted me to sugarcoat the whole thing. But I didn't like the idea that Iris and Dawn wouldn't know anything about their dead grandfather other than the fact that he was a criminal who had died in a federal prison.

It never seemed to me that Dawn was listening all that intently when I talked about my father, or that she cared about the story at all. But one day Iris, who was sixteen at the time, said, “Bullshit,” when I told them that their grandfather had never intended to mishandle the investments people had trusted him with; it had all just snowballed and gotten away from him. “You make it sound like he was the victim,” Iris said, “when really what he did was pure evil.” That was when I knew she had talked to Joe about what her grandfather did. “You get that people lost their entire bank accounts, right? They trusted him, and he pretended to be their friend, when the whole time he was stealing their money.”

The way she put it made me wince, but I couldn't tell her she was wrong. But Dawn turned on her sister and said, “Shut up! He just made a mistake!” I told her I wouldn't call it a mistake, exactly. “Well, what, then?” she asked. When I hesitated, she said, “That's okay. I get it.” But I'm not sure she ever did.

When I sat down at the table across from Tom Whitty, he told me, “Oh, no, you're fine. I didn't mean to scare you.” His skin glistened—I remember Joe told me he had some condition that made him sweat constantly, regardless of the temperature—and he reached to grab another napkin from the dispenser at the side of the table.

We made small talk over coffee for a few minutes, because Tom seemed hesitant to tell me why he'd called. Finally, he asked if I'd heard from Dawn recently. “Actually, she's moved back home,” I told him, steeling myself for the reaction I knew this news would receive. He managed to hide it after a moment, but it was there, as I'd known it would be. “Why?” When he said he wasn't sure where to start, I nodded at the piece of paper I'd seen him turn over on the table. “What's that?”

He picked it up, and I could see he was grateful I'd just come straight out and asked. “I'm really sorry about this, Hanna,” he said, “but I think Dawn's trying to pull a fast one.”

“What do you mean?” By the time he said it, I wasn't necessarily surprised, given his reticence. But a slow curl of dread wound its way through my stomach as I waited to hear the details.

He turned the paper over. “You didn't sign this, did you?” It was a computer printout of a loan agreement from a bank I'd never heard of. Dawn's name was signed over the line that said “Loan Applicant,” and next to it, over “Co-signer,” was scribbled “Hanna Elkind Schutt”—or something that looked like it. The handwriting of the first signature looked identical to the second, and I recognized it immediately.

For a moment, I admit, it occurred to me to lie and say I had signed it; my instinct to protect Dawn was still that strong. But only for a moment. Then I told Tom, “No. That's not even close to what my signature looks like.”

“I didn't think so. I checked it against what I have on file. But I thought, well, maybe after the attack…” I could tell that part of him had been hoping my signature had changed as a result of my cognitive impairment. But the other part was, like Joe, a fraud examiner: he loved to sniff out when people were trying to get away with something, catch them in the act, and see them punished for it. Even if it was the daughter of an old family friend.

I looked at the paper more closely. Dawn had applied for a personal loan in the amount of thirty thousand dollars. Among other information, the form contained my Social Security and banking account numbers.

“Oh,” I said, now understanding what Dawn had been looking for in Joe's desk drawer.

Tom said, “I'm sorry to have to tell you. But Dawn needs to know she could get in a lot of trouble for this.”

“Do you have to report it?”

He shook his head. “No. That's up to you.”

I leaned back in my chair and let the waitress refill my coffee. Tom sneaked a look at his watch, so I thanked him and said I'd take care of it. He left me the copy of the loan application, and I folded it to tuck into my purse. Then I sat and looked out the window at nothing until the coffee turned cold.

If I'd had a cell phone, I would have called Dawn. Instead, knowing that Dottie Wing was the last person on her meal delivery route, I got in my car and drove to Dottie's house, where I parked at the curb and waited. When I saw the Corvette pull into the driveway, I went to meet her at the trunk as she pulled out the tray containing Dottie's food.

“Goddamn it!” She practically dropped it when she saw me.

I was about to apologize when I remembered why I'd come. “I just saw Tom Whitty,” I told her. When she shrugged to show that she didn't understand why I was telling her this, I added, “He handles my finances now.”

Dawn just kept looking at me, with no acknowledgment of what I'd said, for a good ten seconds. Though it hadn't happened since she'd come home, I remembered this from her growing-up years—how could I have forgotten?—the way she'd stare at someone who'd addressed her, to the point that sometimes people had to say, “Did you
hear
me?” I pulled from my purse the paper Tom had given me. I handed it to her, and when she didn't unfold it, I said, “Read it, Dawn,” in a tone I had rarely if ever used with her, even when she was a child.

“Can't this wait until we get home?” But she saw from my expression that it couldn't. With a weary sigh, as if I were aggrieving her, she opened the paper and kept her eyes on it far longer than she should have needed to understand what it was. Then she closed it and murmured, “Mommy, I just wanted to have some money of my own, to start my life over. Is that so wrong? Here I am without a college degree, so what kind of job can I get? A real job, I mean. Not
this
.” She gestured at the house's front window, behind which I knew Dottie Wing waited for her lunch. “I was never convicted of anything. Never even indicted. But all I can do is make eight bucks an hour delivering
food.” Right there, in Dottie's driveway, she began to cry.

I told myself not to soften. Actually, it was Joe I tried to channel:
She needs to take responsibility for her own life.
“You didn't even ask me if I'd sign,” I said. “You didn't ask
me
for a loan. Why not?”

“I knew you wouldn't do either,” she said. Of course, she was right.

“And how were you ever going to pay it back? Did you think about that?”

She shook her head, finally setting the tray down on the car.

“That's the problem with you, Dawn. You do things without ever thinking ahead about the consequences.” Now she nodded, but I knew she was barely registering my words. This made me angry, so I drew on all the fuel that had been building up since she returned home.

“What's with this car, anyway?” I tapped the Corvette and she flinched, as if I had made contact with her instead of the car's hood. “Why are you driving this? You could get some good money for that car.” It had been something I'd wanted to say since the moment I saw her pull the Corvette into the driveway the night she arrived back home.

This did get through; I could tell from the way her eyes immediately began to narrow. “I like my car. I'm keeping it,” she said, the way a child would insist she wanted to keep a toy. She added, “Can we not talk about this now, while I'm at work?”

I didn't want to hold Dottie Wing's food from her, waiting for an answer I was never going to get. I waved at the house, and Dawn took this as the signal I intended—that she was dismissed.

Back at the clinic, we were overrun suddenly by more than a dozen four-year-olds whose mothers worried they had strep throat. They all seemed to come at once, after their mothers had picked them up from preschool, so we were able to finish testing them in a shorter amount of time than if they'd had appointments. My head was aching; I kept seeing, in my mind's eye, the way Dawn had scrawled my name under the amount
Thirty thousand dollars
on the paper Tom had held out to me. As far as I could tell, she hadn't even tried to disguise her handwriting, or to imitate mine. When the last child had left with her certificate for an ice cream cone at Lickety Split, I told Francine I didn't feel well and left work an hour before my shift ended.

There was an unfamiliar car—one Iris would have referred to as a shitbox—parked behind Dawn's in the driveway when I returned. In the kitchen I found a young man sitting at the table eating chips while Dawn put pizza on two paper plates. She turned to me looking startled and said, “Mom! You're early!”

“I had to come home. My head is killing me.” I was still upset over the loan forgery, but not enough to continue arguing with Dawn in front of a stranger. I said a tentative hello as I read the front of his jersey, which said
I GET ENOUGH EXERCISE PUSHING MY LUCK
. It made me smile, and he seemed to appreciate this.

Then I felt my mouth go stiff as I recognized him: it was the kid with the Cat in the Hat tee-shirt and auburn curls I'd felt watching me at the mall, the day Rud Petty's new trial was announced. “I know you,” I said, seeing the look of further shock my words triggered in Dawn's face.

“You do not,” she said to me. “How could you? This is my friend Stew.”

Stew wiped crumbs across the top of his jeans and stuck his hand out to me. “I remember you from the mall,” I told him.

“What mall?” Dawn said.

“Really? I don't remember.” He gave a smile I was sure was supposed to charm me. “But I like their food court, so, yeah, maybe. I'm there a lot.”

“What are you talking about?” Frustrated, Dawn pulled cheese off the side of the pizza box and rolled it between her fingers.

“I felt like you were watching me,” I told him.

He laughed. “Me? Why would I do that?” His tone implied I should feel stupid for suggesting such a thing.

I turned to Dawn. “How do you two know each other?”

“Mom, what is this, the prom and you're my father?” Dawn flushed. “I'm allowed to have friends, you know.”

“Of course you are. I just don't remember Stew from high school, that's all.”

“I met him after that.”

“When?”
At Lawlor?
I might have asked. He didn't look like the type who would have tried or wanted to belong to that kind of crowd. When would she have come across someone while the trial was going on, when she lived with Peter and Wendy? As far as I knew, she hadn't exactly been out socializing during that time. And surely he wasn't a friend from New Mexico who had followed her home to Everton.

But she was saved from having to answer when there was a rap at the back door and we all looked to see Warren Goldman standing there with a covered dish. He stuck his head in and said, “Anybody hungry? I made this big cassoulet.”

“The fuck is that?” Stew said.

“Oh, Warren.” I went over to the door. “Thanks, but right now I need to talk to Dawn. In fact, Stew, would you excuse us, too?”