Life Sentences (3 page)

“CASSANDRA FALLOWS? WHO'S SHE WITH?”

Gloria Bustamante peered at the old-fashioned pink phone memo the temp held out with a quavering hand. The girl had already been dressed down three times today and was now so jangly with nerves that she was caroming off doors and desks, dropping everything she touched, and squeaking reflexively when the phone rang. She wouldn't last the week, an unusually hectic one to be sure, given all the calls about the Harrington case. Too bad, because she was highly decorative, a type that Gloria favored, although not for the reasons suspected by most.

The girl examined her own handwriting. “She's a writer?”

“Don't let your voice scale up at the end of a declarative sentence,
dear,” Gloria said. “No one will ever take you seriously. And I assume she's a writer—or a reporter—if she's calling about Buddy Harrington. I need to know which newspaper or television program she reps.”

Gloria's tone was utterly neutral to her ears, but the girl cowered as if she had been threatened. Ah, she had probably hoped for something far more genteel when she signed up at the agency, an assignment at one of those gleaming start-ups along the water. Arriving at Gloria's building, an old nineteenth-century town house, she would have adjusted her expectations to something old-fashioned but still grand, based on the gleaming front door and restored exterior, the leaded glass and vintage lighting on the first two floors.

Those lower floors, however, were rented to a more fastidious law firm. Gloria's own office was on the third story, up a sad little carpeted staircase where dust rose with every step and the door gave way to a warren of rooms so filled with boxes that visitors had to take it on faith that there was furniture beneath them. “I want prospective clients to know that every one of the not insignificant pennies I charge goes to their defense, not my décor,” Gloria told the few friends she had in Baltimore's legal community. She knew that even those friends, such as they were, amended in their heads,
It's not going to your wardrobe or your upkeep, either.
For Gloria Bustamante was famously, riotously, deliberately seedy, although not as cheap with herself as she was with her office. The run-down heels she wore were Prada, her stained knit suits came from Saks Jandel in DC, her dirty rings and necklaces had been purchased on lavish trips abroad. Gloria wanted people to know that she had money, that she could afford the very best—and could afford to take crappy care of the very best.

The girl stammered, “N-no, she's not a journalist. She wrote that book, the one about her, um, father?
Father.
I read it for book club? I mean, I did, I read it for book club.”

“Pretty young girls go to book clubs? I thought those were for ugly old broads such as me. Not that you'll catch me in a room full of women, drinking wine and talking about a
book.
Drinking, maybe.”

The girl's eyes skittered around the room, trying to find a safe place to land. Clearly, she was unsure if she was obliged to contradict the inescapable truth of Gloria's appearance or if she should pretend that she hadn't yet noticed that Gloria was old and ugly.

“It was a mother-daughter book club,” she said at last. “I went with my mom.”

“Thanks for the clarification, dearie. Otherwise, I might think you went with your prepubescent daughter, conceived, in the great local tradition, when you were a mere middle schooler.”

The girl took a few steps backward. She had that breathtaking freshness seen only in girls under twenty-five when everything—hair, eyes, lips, even fingernails—gleamed without benefit of cosmetics. The whites of this girl's eyes were more startling to Gloria than the light-blue irises, the shell-pink ears as notable as the round, peachy cheeks. And she had the kind of boyish figure that was increasingly rare in this era of casual plastic surgery, when even the thinnest girls seemed to sprout ridiculously large breasts. Gloria remembered the tricks of her youth, not that she had ever bothered with them, the padded bras, the wads of Kleenex. They had been far more credible in their way than all these perky cantaloupes, which looked, in fact, as if they had been molded with very large melon ballers. Real breasts weren't so
round.
She hoped this girl wouldn't tamper with what nature had allotted her.

“I grew up in Ruxton?” the girl said, and it was clear that she intended the well-to-do suburb to establish that she was not the kind of girl who had a baby at age twelve.
Oh, you'd be surprised, dearie,
Gloria wanted to say.
You'd be shocked at the wealthy families who have sat in my office, trying to decide what to do when one of Daddy's friends—or Daddy himself—has helped himself to an underage daughter. It happens. Even in Ruxton. After all, Buddy Harrington happened in a suburb not that far from Ruxton.

“I'm sure you did,” Gloria said. “So Cassandra Fallows wants to write a book about Buddy Harrington? She must be one of those true-crime types who specialize in whipping books out in four to six weeks. We'll give her a wide berth.”

Buddy Harrington was, as of this third full week in February, being held responsible for 80 percent of the murders in Baltimore County this year. Granted, the county had only five homicides so far, as compared to the city's thirty or so. Still, Harrington was charged with four of them—his mother, father, and twin sisters, all shot as they slept. The sixteen-year-old had called the police on a Thursday evening two weeks ago, claiming to have discovered the bodies after returning home from a chorale competition in Ocean City. He had been charged before the day was out, although he had yet to confess and was pressing Gloria to let him tell his story far and wide. She was holding him back precisely because of that eagerness, his keenness to perform. For Buddy Harrington was not the kind of boy who inspired the usual descriptions of those who snap—quiet, introverted. He was an outstanding student, a star athlete, and a gifted singer, well liked by classmates, admired by teachers. The community was stunned.

Gloria, who had spent several hours with Buddy since his arrest, was not. She also knew that all the things that Buddy considered his assets—his good looks, his normalcy—would undercut him. Nothing terrified people more than an all-American sociopath. And until—unless—she got Buddy into the juvenile system, she had to keep him from tainting his future jury. Which would not, of course, be a jury of his peers, but a dozen middle-class mothers and fathers who would be undone by his poise, his composure. Especially—shades of O.J.!—if he stuck to this help-me-find-the-real-killer scenario.

“No, it's not about Buddy. She wants to ask you about an old case?” The girl squinted at her own handwriting. “Something about a calley-ope?”

“A calley—do you mean Calliope?” Gloria could afford to keep her office in disarray and limit her exposure to computers because the entire history of her practice was always available to her. She had a prodigious memory. On those rare occasions when someone felt intimate enough to challenge her on her drinking, she maintained that it was the only way to level the playing field.

Not that she was likely to forget Callie Jenkins under any circumstances. She had tried.

“Yes, that's it. Calliope. Calliope Jenks.”

“Jenkins.”

“Right.”

“What, specifically, does she want to know?”

“She wouldn't say?”

“Did you ask?”

The girl's downward gaze answered the question more emphatically than any statement-question she might have offered in return. Gloria leaned across the desk and tried to take the paper, but the girl was out of reach. She moved forward tentatively, as if Gloria might bite her, jumping back as soon as Gloria had the phone memo in her hand.

“It's an out-of-state number,” Gloria said. “New York, I think, but not the city proper. Long Island, maybe Brooklyn. I can't keep all the new ones straight.” She had, in fact, once been able to recognize every area code at a glance. She knew state capitals, too, and was always the one person at a party who could complete any set of names—the seven dwarves, the nine Supreme Court justices, the thirteen original colonies.

“But she's in town,” the girl said, thrilled that she had gleaned an actual fact. “For a while, she said. That's her cell. She said she plans to be in town for a while.”

Gloria crumpled the pink sheet and tossed it in the overflowing trash can by the desk, where it bounced out.

“But she's famous!” the girl said. “I mean, for a writer. She's been on
Oprah.
”

“I don't talk to people unless they can help me. That case ended a long time ago, and it's better forgotten. Callie's a private citizen now, living her life. It's the least she deserves.”

Was it?
Gloria wondered after dismissing the girl. Did Calliope have the least she deserved or far more? What about Gloria? Had she gotten more than she deserved, less, or exactly her due? Had Gloria done the best she could for Callie, given the circumstances, or let her down?

But Gloria didn't like the concept of guilt any more than she liked the word
guilty
coming from a jury foreman, not that she had a lot of experience hearing the latter. Guilt was a waste, misplaced energy. Guilt was a legal finding, a determination made by others. Gloria didn't have time for guilt, and she was almost certain she didn't deserve to feel it, not in the case of Callie Jenkins. Almost.

She called the temp agency and told them she wouldn't be able to use the new girl past this week. “Send me someone new. More capable, but equally pretty.”

“You're not allowed to say that,” the agency rep objected.

“Sue me,” Gloria said.

“WHY AREN'T YOU STAYING WITH ME?”
her mother asked, and not for the first time. “That was the original plan.”

“Yes, when I was going to be in Baltimore a week. But for ten, twelve weeks? I would drive you crazy.”
And you me.

“But a hotel room, for all that time—you won't be able to cook for yourself—”

“It's an apartment, the kind set up for short-term corporate renters.” Cassandra anticipated her mother's next protest: “It's not that expensive.”

“Did you sublet your place back in New York?”

“No.”

“So you're carrying two rents for three months. And you'll need a car here.”

“Mom, I have my own car. I drove down. I drove here, it's parked in your driveway.”

“I don't know what the point is of having a car if you live in New York.”

“I like to be able to get away—visit friends upstate or at the…beach.” She used the generic,
beach,
instead of the specific,
Hamptons,
out of fear that the latter would provoke another spasm of worry.

The reviews of the last book had been hard on her mother. Her mother's e-mails had been hard on Cassandra. Until this winter, she hadn't even known that her mother could initiate e-mail. She seemed to use the laptop that Cassandra had given her for nothing more than playing hearts and solitaire while depending on the reply-to function to answer Cassandra's sporadic notes. Even then, she was extremely terse. “Thank you.” Or “That's nice, dear.” Lennie Fallows seemed to think e-mail was the equivalent of a telegram or a long-distance call back in the seventies. It was a mode of communication to be limited to dire emergencies or special occasions, and even then brevity was required.

Then, back in January, the e-mails had started, with no “RE:” in the subject headers, with no subject headers at all, which made them all the more terrifying, as Cassandra had no idea what conversation her mother was about to start.

“I wouldn't worry about the Kirkus.” “The PW is good, if you omit the dependent clause.” “Sorry about the New York Times.”

Except she hadn't written “the
New York Times
” or even “NYT,” come to think of it, but the critic's surname, as if the woman were a neighbor, an intimate. This detail saddened Cassandra most of all. All she had ever wanted was to give her mother a sense of ownership in Cassandra's success. She had felt that way even as a teenager, back when Lennie was, in fact, a profound embarrassment, running around town in—oh, God, the memory still grated—painter's pants or overalls, that
horrible cap on her head, tools sticking out of her pockets. Yet Lennie insisted on crediting Cassandra's achievements to her ex-husband's side of the DNA ledger. Even the book that had forged Cassandra's reputation had been problematic for her mother, arriving with that title that slanted everything toward
him.

But the life that book brought Cassandra—ah, that her mother had loved and gloried in, and not because of the small material benefits that came her way. She adored turning on the radio and hearing Cassandra's voice, basked in being in a store and having a neighbor comment on one of Cassandra's television appearances. Once, in the Giant, Cassandra had seen how it worked: Her mother furrowed her brow at the mention of Cassandra's most recent interview, as if it were impossible to keep track of her daughter's media profile. Was it
Today
?
Charlie Rose
? That weird show on cable where everyone shouted?

You must be very proud of her,
the neighbor persisted.

And Lennie Fallows—it had never occurred to her to drop the surname of the man she detested—said with steely joy, “I was
always
proud of her.” In her mother's coded lexicon, this was the rough equivalent of
Go fuck yourself.

Cassandra opened the refrigerator to browse its contents, a daughter's prerogative. It was huge, the kind of double-wide Sub-Zero one might find in a small restaurant. The kitchen had been Lennie's latest project, and superficially, it looked great. But Cassandra knew where to find the corners her mother never stopped cutting, a legacy of the lean years that had left her so fearful. The refrigerator and the stove would be scratch-and-dent specials, with tiny flaws that prevented them from being sold at full list. The new porcelain sink would have been purchased at Lennie's “professional” discount—and, most likely, installed by her, along with the faucet and garbage disposal. She had kept the palette relatively plain. “Better for resale,” she said, as if she had any intention of putting the house on the market. Like Penelope stalling her suitors, Lennie continually undid her own work. By Cassandra's reckoning,
this was the kitchen's third renovation. Lennie was desperate not to leave the house, which had been big for a family of three, almost ruinous for a single mother and daughter, simply ridiculous for a woman now in her seventies.

But this conversation was already too fraught to take on the subject of the house, which her mother had come to love and defend against all comers. Instead, Cassandra asked her mother, “Do you remember Calliope?”

“An organ? You mean at the Presbyterian church? And I think it's pronounced differently, dear.” Her father would have made the correction first.

“No, in my class. Callie Jenkins. At Dickey Hill, starting in fourth grade. She's in one of the photographs. She wore her hair in three fat braids, with those little pompon things on the ends.”

Cassandra bunched up a fistful of her own hair to jog her mother's memory.

“Three—oh, she must have been black.”

“Mother.”

“What? There's nothing bigoted in saying that. Unless you're me, I guess. I'm not allowed to notice the color of anyone's skin.”

Cassandra had no desire to lecture her mother. Besides, she had a point.

“At any rate, I was watching CNN and there was a story about this case in New Orleans—a woman's child is missing and she took the Fifth, refused to say where the child is. Someone said it was similar to a case here years ago, involving Calliope Jenkins. It has to be the same person, don't you think? The age is about right, and how many Calliope Jenkinses could there be in Baltimore?”

“More than you might think.”

Cassandra couldn't tell if her mother was being literal or trying to make some larger point about infanticide or her hometown. “Don't you think that would make a good book?”

Her mother pondered. That was the precise word—she puckered her forehead and considered the question at hand as if she were Cassandra's literary agent or editor, as if Cassandra could not go forward without her mother's blessing.

“True crime? That would be different for you.”

“Not exactly true crime. I'd weave the story of what happened to Callie as an adult with our lives as children, our time in school together. Remember, she was one of the few girls who went to junior high with me.”

“One of the few black girls,” her mother said with a look that dared Cassandra to correct her for referencing Callie's race.

“Well, yes. And race is a small part of the story, I guess. But it's really Callie's story. If I can find her.”

“Even if you do find her, can she speak to you? I remember the case—”

“You do?”

“Anyone who lived here at the time would remember.” Was there a implicit rebuke in her mother's words, a reminder that Cassandra had disappointed her by moving away? “I didn't recognize her name, but I remember when it happened. The whole point was that she wouldn't talk. But if she did kill her child, she can still be charged. If she didn't, why didn't she cooperate all those years ago?”

Cassandra was well aware of this particular problem; her editor had raised it first. They had agreed the book wouldn't be dependent on a confession, or even answering all the questions, but the reader would need to believe that Cassandra had reached some kind of conclusion about her old school friend.
Old school friend
was the editor's term, and while Cassandra had initially tried to correct the impression, using
classmate
and
acquaintance,
she soon gave up. What was a “friend,” after all, when you were ten or eleven? They had played together at school, gone to birthday parties together.

“I can't plan this book in advance. That's what makes it exciting.
With the first two books, they were already constructed, in a sense. I had lived them, I just didn't know how I would write it. And they were very solitary enterprises. Solipsistic, even. But this time—I'm going to interview Callie, once I find her, but also other girls from the class. Tisha, Donna, Fatima. And Callie's lawyer, I guess, and the police detective who investigated her…heavens, I'm not sure three months here will be enough.”

“And, of course,” her mother said, staring into her tea, “you'll be here for all the hoo-haw surrounding your father.”

“One event in a week of events,” Cassandra said. “A simple onstage interview, and I'm doing it only because it will raise money for the Gordon School's library building fund. We do owe the school a great debt. Besides, it will be interesting, interviewing Daddy in front of a captive audience. He's the king of digressions.”

“Yes,” her mother said. “Your father loved
digressing.
”

“It's not a big deal,” Cassandra said. She wished, as she often did, that they were a family comfortable with casual touches, that she could place her hand over her mother's now.

“I know,” her mother said. “I just hate the way he…romanticizes what he did, to the point where he won't even talk about it. Or her.”

Cassandra respected her mother for holding on to that “Or her” for all these years, refusing to say Annie's name unless forced. It might not be particularly healthy, but it was impressive. Cassandra shared her mother's talent for grudges—it was, she liked to say in speeches, a useful quality for the memoirist, the ability to remember every slight, no matter how small. They called it their Hungarian streak, a reference to her mother's mother, who had gone thirty years without speaking to her son and lived just long enough to see her granddaughter immortalize this fact in her first book. Nonnie hadn't minded, not in the least. It had given her a little bit of cachet in the retirement center where she lived, largely indifferent to her neighbors. On what would prove to be Cassandra's last visit with her, Nonnie had insisted on going to the dining
hall, parading her successful granddaughter past the other residents: “My granddaughter, she's a writer, a real one, a bestseller.” Cassandra wasn't sure if her grandmother had even read the book in which she took such pride; the volumes—only one book then, but Nonnie had purchased the hardcover
and
paperback—stood on a table in her apartment. They were, in fact, the only books in the apartment, perhaps the only books her grandmother had ever owned. Nonnie had been mystified, but proud, when her daughter had married a learned man, as she called him. And, true to her own unfathomable principles about loyalty, she continued to like Cedric Fallows even after he betrayed her daughter.

“I've never understood,” Cassandra said at that last lunch, “why you could forgive my father but not your own son. What did he do?”

Her grandmother waved the question away, as she had repeatedly while Cassandra was working on
My Father's Daughter.
“Pfftt. I don't talk to him and I don't talk of him.”

“Okay, but what Daddy did was pretty bad. Does that mean Uncle Leon did something even worse?”

“Your father, Uncle Leon…who knows?”

“Someone must know.”

“It doesn't matter. The book is good.” Meaning: It sold a lot of copies. “It doesn't have to be true.
War and Peace
isn't true.”

“My book is true, Nonnie. It's a memoir, I made a point to get everything right.”

“But you can only get things as right as people let you.”

“Are you mad that I told the story about Uncle Leon and you? I asked your side.”

Nonnie pointed a fork at her. “I know how to be mad at people and if I were mad, you wouldn't be here.”

A month later, she was dead. Cassandra was surprised to see her father at the funeral, more surprised that he had the tact not to bring Annie. He seldom went anywhere without her. Still, when the rabbi invited people up to share their thoughts, Cedric simply couldn't resist getting
up to say a few words, awkward as that was. Uncle Leon didn't get up, nor did Cassandra's mother, but the son-in-law who long ago ceased to be a son-in-law waxed eloquent about a woman he had never much liked.

Later, at a brunch in her mother's house, Cassandra ventured to her father, “Nonnie said I didn't know the truth of the things I wrote, that I got them wrong.” They were alone, by the buffet table, and she was struck by the novelty of having him to herself.

“Nonnie was the queen of the mind-fuckers,” her father said, spearing cold cuts. “Do you know why she was so angry at your uncle Leon?”

“No, she would never tell me.”

“That's because she couldn't remember. He did something thirty years ago that pissed her off, but she would never tell him what it was. Then she forgot. She forgot the precipitating incident, but she never forgot the grudge. Your uncle Leon was desperate to apologize, but he never knew what he did. Your mother used to go visit her and try to guess what Leon did, so he might make amends, and your grandmother would say, ‘No, that's not it,' like some Alzheimer's-addled Sphinx or a Hungarian Rumpelstiltskin, forcing the princess to guess his name when he didn't know it himself.”

Could it really be? Cassandra decided she believed him, although her father had never let the facts get in the way of a good story.