Life Sentences (3 page)

Over the years Pilar had looked at her mother, who was often cowering in some corner of their house. Tonight, as they sped homeward from graduation, it was no different. Her mother did know her place. There she sat, as far as she could from Marcus, using the window rather than his shoulder as a pillow. Marcus was totally clueless about Pilar’s need for independence and personal success. As to the idea of status, Pilar’s definition was the polar opposite of her father’s.

So why was she still crying? Pilar covered her face in the robe.

L
IGHTS FROM A FREIGHTER
defined the dark, placid waters of Lake Saint Clare. The Mercedes turned up the driveway marked by an electric gate with
The Brookstones
etched in brass. Pilar opened a window. The familiar damp air had been one of few comforts during her bleak childhood, and brought back memories of a little girl awakened by the sun shimmering off the water and across her bedroom wall. Back then, she raced down the manicured front lawn to play with Bud, her yellow lab, in the waves lapping the beach.

Pilar raised her still sore body to an upright position and rubbed her eyes with her fists the way that child would have done. Marcus rounded the circle of the drive and parked in front of the nine-foot mahogany entrance doors. The gray stone building, Marcus’ inheritance, loomed in the darkness, as cold and brooding as a Gothic mansion from a Daphne du Maurier novel. Pilar remembered no casual visits from friends dropping by, ever.

There had been little honest cheerfulness here. Yet Pilar couldn’t help smile at the one thing that once had brightened each homecoming – Bud jumping up to lick her face. He was the only dog her father allowed in the echoing house. Bud died when Pilar was 12.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, P
ILAR
awakened to the mauve curtains fluttering in the open window opposite her bed. She stretched and inhaled. The breeze from the lake came sweetened with spring fragrances, and when she threw the bed covers off, the lemon scent of fresh laundry filled the air. Pilar grinned, thinking how her mother wanted everything perfect and sometimes that wasn’t a bad trait. Her smile faded when she scanned the day-lit room. Her mother tried too hard to ensconce Pilar in their old ways.

Nothing had changed except for a fresh coat of soft pink paint on the walls. The antique white canopy bed in thecenter was anchored by identical tables on either side. As a child, when Pilar lay in bed, the canopy of mauve and plum flowers spread above and sheltered her like a secret garden. A large chest snugged its foot. Pilar knew her childhood toys would be neatly stored inside. An American Girl doll collection sat like rows of ladies-in-waiting on shelves that lined the walls. Pilar long ago had stuffed the Barbie Dolls in boxes and packed them away in her closet.

On the dresser sat a silver-framed photo of a ten-year-old Pilar and her parents. She and her mother were smiling and squinting into the sun. They had their arms around each other’s waist, while Marcus, thin lipped, stood stiffly off to the side. He didn’t touch either Pilar or Celeste. “Like the old saying goes,” Pilar commented as she glowered at the photograph, “a picture says a thousand words.”

Reluctant to get out of her garden bed, Pilar finally sat up, back propped against a pillow, and gazed out the window at the sun-rays streaking like glass ribbons across the lake. She doubted her mother would ever come to grips with the reality that Pilar wouldn’t stay longer than the three years she contracted with Detroit Receiving.

It was a compromise, because Pilar had been accepted and wanted to attend the Cleveland Clinic. But, that four-hour drive wasn’t close enough for her mother. Though disappointed, Pilar again gave into her mother’s appeal. “You’ll be gone from me soon enough,” Celeste said. “Just stay with me a few more years.” Pilar felt her mothersounded as though once Pilar was finished with her residency, they would soon be forever separated. Had Celeste feared facing an empty nest with her distant husband? Or had she seen something in Pilar’s future?

Pilar shivered about her mother’s unusual premonitions. For instance, Celeste often knew the grades Pilar got on important tests before she could tell her. Like the time Pilar raced home to show Celeste her grade on her biology test. “You got a 98 on that test. Good for you,” Celeste blurted out. She tried to cover up her insight by adding, “Let me see it.”

“How did you know my exact grade?” Pilar asked, stunned by her mother’s uncanny ability to always know things before she could tell or show her. “Did you call the school?”

“No, dear. A lucky guess.”

“You have a lot of those, Mom.” Pilar handed her the test.

Pilar shuffled to the window and breathed another gulp of lake air. For that moment she only wanted to enjoy the short two weeks before she embarked on her residency. She planned to fill the hours reading good books and making up for sleep lost during exams.

A large crystal vase, an anniversary gift from Pilar’s father to her mother, (no doubt purchased by his secretary) today filled with vibrant pink roses, adorned the desk beneath the window. So many nights her teen self had satthere talking on the telephone, rather than doing homework. In that at least she’d felt normal. Now, she swept her hand across the polished wood top and thought about her best childhood friend, Trish. Pilar never kept in touch. They had drifted in such different directions. Trish, with her stuffy stockbroker husband, was more like their mothers than Pilar would ever be. Julie on the other hand — well. Pilar already missed her.

The sight of her father maneuvering his Lexus past the silver Mercedes onto Lake Shore Road was as familiar as the view of the lake: Pilar had often stood in the same window and watched him drive away, even after her mother begged him to stay. The result was always the same; he’d rather go to the club or wherever — maybe with his son.

Today, when his car vanished into the trees along the road, she imagined her father and the Lexus had been swallowed by the leaves as if by a giant man-eating plant. Most likely he was listening to his cherished tapes of Rush Limbaugh. “Perhaps Father and Rush will never come back,” she chirped like a bird after a summer rain, then shrugged. “Too bad. He’ll only be gone a week to a conference.”

His absence would allow just enough time for Pilar and her mother to share quiet times without interruptions from his confrontations. Pilar daydreamed of renewing the friendship she once had with her mother, one where they confided their deepest secrets to each other. Pilar scrunched her face. All she really foresaw was her mother repeatingher father’s party line: “You think you can get anywhere without a man. Just try it.”

“Well, guess what?” Pilar said to her father’s departing car, “I will.”

Pilar turned from the window to clench Emma, a fuzzy white rabbit, tightly to her chest. Emma had come as an Easter gift from her father, or so Celeste said, when Pilar was six. Pilar’s father, who was out of town that Easter, would never have selected the rabbit. Marcus would have found Emma frivolous. He would also have admonished Celeste for acknowledging a Christian occasion, though the Brookstones only participated in their faith on special Jewish occasions like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Pilar suspected her father worked hard at not attracting attention to his ethnicity. He wanted to blend in at the club.

Though Pilar was well aware her mother had bought Emma, she reacted with the proper amount of joy about her father remembering her, while she hid her hurt over his absence. Emma became Pilar’s favorite toy. She believed the rabbit had the power to chase away all her pre-teen-age pimples, help capture the heart of her latest crush, stop her from covering her head in lightning storms, and scare off any sadness. Emma and Pilar spent hours dancing and singing in the bedroom to Bruce Springsteen. One night Pilar must have gotten carried away to “Born in the USA”, because her loud renditions brought her father to the place he so rarely ventured.

“Turn that damn thing off and practice your Mozart,” he shouted.

Pilar was more stupefied by his knowledge of her piano skills than his vocal intrusion.

Emma also accompanied Pilar on walks along the shores of Lake Michigan where she and her mother spent their annual two weeks at the summer home of Celeste’s brother in Harbor Springs. Pilar left Emma on the cottage bed when she turned thirteen, though, and traded in her make-believe affection for the real thing, holding hands with Joey, Pilar’s first boyfriend. He summered with his parents in the cottage next door. Even at gawky thirteen, Joey squeezed Pilar’s hand in his as they haunted the beach front. Emma couldn’t match that.

Other teenagers also shared Harbor Springs cottages with their families, while Marcus rarely joined Pilar and Celeste on any vacation. In fact, for Pilar’s high school graduation, he sent Celeste and her on a two-month tour of Europe.

Pilar confided to Emma, “It probably gave him more time for the Tiger baseball games with his son, whoever he is.”

Though Pilar left Emma behind when she headed off to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, there were many times Pilar thought she needed the funny rabbit. Now, Pilar hugged Emma and, petting her velvet fur, swayed as she hummed Madonna’s song “Boy Toy.” Emma’s lankylegs and pink satin lined ears and feet bounced to Pilar’s body’s motion. “Remember this song, Emma?” Pilar asked the mute stuffed toy.

Pilar held her at arm’s length, and confided, “Life on my own is going to be tough, Emma, but I know I can make it without leaning on a man.” She squeezed the rabbit and laughed. “And, hey! I’ve still got you!”

O
N HER FIRST DAY
at Detroit Receiving Hospital, Pilar decided to take East Jefferson rather than westbound I-94 into Detroit. Faced with a resident’s grueling schedule, especially ER’s twenty-four-hour shifts, it would be the last chance Pilar would have for a year to enjoy a leisurely drive along the waterfront.

Within ten miles from her parents’ house, the posh Lake Shore Road, lined with a diverse collection of somber mansions, became East Jefferson Avenue. Jefferson meandered through middle class neighborhoods and into east-side Detroit near Belle Isle where Lake St. Clair squeezed into the Detroit River. Pilar had sailed those waters often. From that point the waterway rushed at seven knots past the city. Did it want to put the glass and concrete towers far behind?

As Pilar listened to Bob Edwards on NPR’s “Morning Edition” report about another ethnic cleansing in a country whose name she could hardly spell, she looked out at theboarded-up buildings, empty lots, drug dealers, and thugs of East Jefferson Avenue. Bob probably didn’t know about eastside Detroit.

Pilar dreamily watched the sun spread across the river. The rays peeked through a mantle of tree leaves, forming a lace arbor over side streets crowded with ramshackle homes, trash-strewn lots and cars on blocks waiting to be repaired once the owner got a job. The green canopy seemed to mask the hopeless lives secreted behind doors and curtained windows. Every so often, Pilar glimpsed pots of red and pink geraniums lining a porch, a momentary brightening for what could only be the residents’ despair. She saw few people out so early. From what Pilar had heard, there was little to get up for. “That’s why people like us take the freeway,” she told herself. Her own sarcasm made her cringe. How well she had learned to stay out of the wrong part of the county.

After lowering the visor against the sun’s glare, Pilar slid her hand to the
Detroit Free Press
that lay on the passenger seat. The paper was folded open to the third page where she had circled the four-inch story on Chad Wilbanks. His name had been in the news off and on since she returned home. This article assured the reader that the murderer at that very moment boarded a bus, leaving the Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson to transfer to his permanent home at Hawk Haven Prison in the Upper Peninsula.

Permanent home. Forever imprisoned. Pilar wonderedwhat it would feel like to be trapped behind bars for the rest of one’s life. Chad was what? Twenty-something, she thought she remembered reading. No matter how awful the crime, forever was a long time. At least her incarceration in Grosse Pointe Shores was temporary. She could leave after the three years she’d promised Celeste. To Pilar, those years would be enough of a prison because of her father.

Over breakfast, her usual English muffin and two cups of black coffee, Pilar read and reread the section of the article that said, “As part of his sentence, Wilbanks will never return to Washtenaw County where he was found guilty of first degree murder.” Instead of the relief she expected to feel, something in her felt regret. What made her want to confront this man, the killer of her good friend?

Susan’s smile came to Pilar’s mind, a sweet smile that belied Susan’s quick and unexpected temper. It was probably that same smile, a little tentative, a little timid, that attracted Chad’s attention.

As Pilar maneuvered her car into the right lane, she wondered about Chad’s smile. The murders and subsequent trial had been front page news even in Wisconsin. She recalled a picture of him, not a mugshot. Like most handsome male students, he sported good clothes, styled hair, an athletic physique. But he gazed intensely, almost Pilar, would swear, passionately into the camera. She wondered who had taken the photograph, who had earned that heated stare.

What was this obsession she was developing? Once, after a brief local radio report about Wilbanks’ pending transfer, Pilar found herself in front of the bathroom mirror with toothpaste dripping down her chin. She clutched the brush so tightly it cracked. What she saw was her own auburn, shoulder length hair, her own large, cinnamon-colored eyes. So like Susan’s. So like the other victims’.

Yet, she thought she knew Chad’s smile already, almost as though she had felt it directed at her before. In fact, as bizarre as it seemed even to her, she felt she had encountered this man somewhere, had felt the intensity of his gaze upon her.

Pilar shivered. Enough. Out on the river a lone sailboat struggled against the swift current. She would drive these thoughts away. She would concentrate instead on her residency. What a privilege it was to work at Receiving, a leader in emergency medicine. And what an experience she was likely to be signing up for; the hospital was located in the heart of Detroit.