Love Over Matter (11 page)

“
I’m also a guy. A girl
should do it. It’s less intimidating that way.”

He sure does think highly of himself.
I unbuckle and spin to face the cage. “What about you?” I ask
Rosie, whom I can barely make out in the swiftly falling
darkness.

Ian reads my mind and
triggers the interior light, which only helps so much since I’m
stuck peering through a grid of two-inch holes. “What
about
me?” Rosie
asks.

“
Can you talk to her?” I
say. “
Please?
”

She pulls a doubtful, squinty-eyed
face. “I don’t know anything about this.”

Maybe I should break out my puppy-dog
eyes. “There’s nothing to know. Just ask if Ruth Dawson lives
here.” I give a sideways nod at 77-21 1/2 66th Drive.
“Okay?”

Rosie says, “Then what?”

Ian sighs. “Then Cassie gets to
explain that we knew her son—what was his name?”

“
Anatoly,” I murmur, a
chill prickling my spine.

“
I’ll do it,” Opal
blurts.

Haley yawns and rolls over.

“
Wake her up, would ya?” I
say to anyone willing to poke my sister in the gut.

“
Problem solved,” Ian
declares.

I want to argue, because 1) Opal is
too young for such a grownup responsibility, and 2) she barely knew
George. The problem is, if I nix her involvement, the task will
fall to me; I can feel it. “All right,” I say. “Let’s get going
then.”

“
I’m tired,” moans
Haley.

I should’ve known my sister would
flake out on us. “Whatever,” I say. “Stay here if you
want.”

All at once, Opal, Rosie, Ian, and I
clamber out of the van, then promptly freeze on the sidewalk. “Go
ahead,” I say to spur Opal on. But she doesn’t need prodding. She
strides for the cluster of cement steps, ascending with confidence.
From the awning-covered porch, she rings the bell.

I hang back in runner-up position on
the walkway, Rosie and Ian lingering in a distant third-place tie
by a sun-burnt hedge. The first ring is a dud, so I say, “Try
again.”

Opal shrugs, jams her thumb at the
buzzer once more. And the response?

Absolutely nada.

Ian and Rosie twitter distractingly
about something too light and trivial to be bothered with at the
moment. “Shh!” I hiss at them. I close in on Opal, halting at the
base of the steps. “Third time’s a charm, right?”

She tries a third, fourth, and even
fifth time, not eliciting as much as a ruffle of a
curtain.

“
Just knock!” Ian calls
ahead.

“
Or pound,” I mumble,
because it’s starting to look like we’ll have to blow this house
down. (Where is the Big Bad Wolf when you need him?)

I slink up beside Opal, hold the
screen door ajar so she can rap directly on the slab of steel
separating us from George’s mysterious past. But it’s no use. If
anyone is home, they’re none too keen on engaging a band of
anonymous youths.

Over my shoulder, I glance at the
street, hoping to match a vehicle to the house and ensure that
we’re not hammering away at a vacant building, at least. But it’s
too dark, and I’d only be guessing anyway. “Once more, for old
time’s sake?” I say, thumping the door with the butt of my fist
until my wrist aches.

Eventually, we’re forced to admit
defeat. “That’s too bad,” says Rosie.

Opal and I parade down the walk in
full-pout mode. “Stupid waste of time,” I mutter.

Ian hangs an arm over my shoulder, a
move that attracts Rosie’s (jealous?) eye. “We gave it our best
shot,” he assures me. “George would be proud.”

In a little knot, the four of us turn
for the van. But then a shaky old man’s voice shouts, “Hey, you
kids! What are you doing over there?”

Oh, no,
I think.
Not another
Crazy Shotgun Guy.
In Queens.

Dare I look?

As if she’s been dropped from a
passing spaceship, Haley appears on the sidewalk. “What
the . . . ?” she says, sounding both dreamy and
perturbed.

“
You kids get over here!”
shouts the man.

Why the hell not?
I think.
We might as well
do
something
interesting on this trip.

“
Huh?” I say, escaping
Ian’s embrace and heading two doors down, where a withered dude
leans on a cane, the glow of a stubby light post highlighting his
ski-slope nose before vanishing in the depths of his concave
cheeks.

The man squares up, his fingers
curling tighter around the cane. “Who are you?” he asks tersely,
once we’re nigh on his doorstep. “State your business, or
. . . or I’ll buzz the coppers.”

The coppers? As in the police? Really?
“Uh . . .”

Ian stiff-arms me to the background.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. We’re not here to cause any
trouble.” He gives the guy a congenial smile. “Do you know a woman
by the name of Ruth Dawson? She’s, um, related to a friend of
ours.”

At the mention of George’s mother, the
air seems to shift. “Miss Dawson? That’s who you’re here
for?”

“
Mm-hmm,” I say. “Is she
around?”

“
Are you with the
government?”

“
The government?” Haley
repeats.

“
No,” I say. “We don’t know
anything about . . .”

The man studies us for a moment with
beady, bloodshot eyes. “What do you want with Miss
Dawson?”

“
It’s kind of personal,” I
hedge.

“
Like what kind of
personal?”

Is this guy nosy, or what? I don’t
want to do it—I really don’t—but he’s left me no choice. “We need
to talk to her about her son.”

With a covert glance, the man scans
the street. “Come in,” he says, gesturing frantically at the door.
“And hurry up.”

* * *

Cinnamon. As soon as we set foot in
the toothpick-skinny home of Ruth Dawson’s neighbor, a cloud of the
sweet spice swallows us. “Are you, like, making cider or
something?” I ask, probably rudely, as our little gang huddles
around a hefty wooden coffee table in the shag-carpeted,
furniture-stuffed living room.

The old guy ignores me, clomps around
snatching newspapers and opened mail into rough piles. When the
seating areas are clear, he barks, “Well, don’t just stand there.
Cool your jets already.” He drops into the head-honcho chair, a
tufted-velvet recliner with a view of the street, and waits for us
to finish a musical-chairs-style dance. Once we’re settled—Opal,
Haley, and me on a squishy sofa, Ian and Rosie on its matching love
seat—the guy continues, “I’m Lionel, by the way. Or Mr. Rabinski,
if you prefer. And who might you be?”

“
My name’s Ian, sir. And
this is Rosie, Opal, Haley, and Cassandra,” Ian says with a wave
down the line.

The guy gives us a raggedy-toothed
grin. “Lucky man, all these beautiful ladies on your
arm.”

Ian looks tongue-tied, so I redirect
the conversation. “So . . . did you say you know Ruth
Dawson?”

“
I wish you’d stop saying
that. If anyone’s listening, we could
be . . .”

“
We could be
what?
” Haley
snaps.

Mr. Rabinski pulls the drapes back,
steals a paranoid glance outside. When he’s satisfied we’re in the
clear, he leans toward us and lowers his voice. “In trouble with
the CIA.”

Okay, it’s official: the dude is
cuckoo—which you’d never guess by the way Haley’s eyes widen. “I’m
sorry,” I say. “But if you don’t have any information about Ruth
Dawson, we should probably be going. Right?” I look to Rosie and/or
Ian for confirmation, but they’re as captivated by the CIA mention
as my sister is.

“
Simmer down, French Fry,
before you wake Eleanor.”

Rosie scoots to the edge of her seat.
“Is she your wife?”

“
Fifty-two years,” he says
with a nod. “You kids from around here? Don’t sound like you are.
Sound like you’re from New England somewhere. Massachusetts,
maybe?”

“
Vermont,” reveals Ian. “We
live in Milbridge.”

Mr. Rabinski slaps his thigh. “See, I
knew it.”

I study the haphazardly displayed
photographs on the fireplace mantel—big ones, small ones; some
framed, some bare; multiple shots layered over one another. “That
woman,” I say, pointing out a sepia-toned picture that towers above
the others, “looks exactly like you.”

“
Good reason for that,” Mr.
Rabinski says. “She’s my daughter, Caroline. The oldest of nine.
All girls.”

“
Whoa,” says Opal, her
only-child mind presumably blown.

“
It’s funny you should
mention Carol,” Mr. Rabinski continues. “She was quite friendly
with”—he points his eyes toward Ruth Dawson’s
house—“
you know who
.”

Oh, great. George’s mother is some
kind of psycho villain who must remain nameless? The Voldemort of
Middle Village, Queens? “What happened?” I dare to ask.

“
Come again?”

“
With Carol and Ruth. You
said they
used to be
friends.”

He draws a tense, whistling breath.
“Can you keep a secret?”

He’s come to the right girl—or, well,
the right girl’s come to him. As for my pals . . . he’ll
have to take his chances. “Go ahead.”

“
I probably shouldn’t tell
you this,” he says in a resigned tone, “but it’s been so long now.
And somebody should . . .”

Uh-oh. I feel something serious
coming. “Okay . . .”

“
First, what do you already
know?”

Ian throws me an encouraging nod. With
a shimmy, I coax the birth certificate from my shorts. “We got Ruth
Dawson’s address from this.” I pass the paper to Mr. Rabinski. “It
belonged to our friend, George Brooks. He died in a car accident a
couple of years ago.”

He studies the sheet, takes his time
putting two and two together. “Carol and Ruth were pregnant at the
same time,” he says, his eyes misting over. “That’s what got ‘em so
close, I think, even though Carol was in her thirties and Ruth was
only about twenty-five.”

The way’s he’s talking about everyone
in the past tense gets me thinking they might be dead. “Does she
live around here? Carol, I mean?”

“
Did at the time,” he says.
“Her husband’s in the Navy. He was deployed to . . .
well, I can’t remember now.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “But
the point is, he wasn’t around for the pregnancy. Eleanor wanted
Carol at home with us, in case something happened.”

Rosie asks, “But everything turned out
okay?”

“
Oh, yes. We’ve got the
sweetest granddaughter, Paige. She’s headed to Vassar in two—maybe,
three—weeks now.”

This is all very fascinating,
but . . . “And what about Ruth Dawson? Is she still
next door? We tried knocking, but nobody answered.”

He stares a hole through
the birth certificate. (Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if smoke
started billowing out of the thing.) “You’re picking at a scab
here,” he says. “What happened . . . it weren’t right.
But there was nothing we could do without risking everything.”
Haley and Opal exchange intrigued looks; meanwhile, Rosie and Ian
lean in to each other, their knees softly rubbing. “Now brace
yourselves,” he continues, slipping the birth certificate back to
me, “’cause the truth is a bit . . .
unpleasant.
See, your friend’s mother
was, uh, arrested.”

“
Arrested?” echoes
Ian.

“
As a spy, for the
Russians. She was deported right after giving birth. We never heard
what happened to her—or the baby. That really broke Carol up; she
thought of that baby as part of her too.”

My mind is as numb as an ice cube. “He
was awesome,” I say about George. “Your daughter would have loved
him.”

With a scrunch of her nose, Haley
inquires, “What about the father? Was he a spy too?”

“
That’s the interesting
part: I don’t think so. Carol was pretty sure she knew who the
father was. Praise the Lord, nobody ever asked us about
it.”

“
You wouldn’t happen to
remember his name, would you?” probes Ian.

A shot of hope surges through
me.

Mr. Rabinski scratches at a patch of
stubble on his chin and eyes us suspiciously. “Why? What’re you
going to do if I tell you?”

I give a genuine shrug.
“Track him down, probably,” I say. “Find out who he is, what he
knows about George—
if
he knows anything at all.”

His expression relaxes. “He’s got a
unique name. Sort of oddball, if you ask me. Shouldn’t be too hard
to locate, especially if he’s still at the university.”

“
Vassar?” I ask.

He practically busts a gut with a
wheezy laugh. “Lord, no,” he says once he’s up to breathing
normally again. “Columbia. He was a professor of . . .
anthropology, I think. Ruth was one of his graduate
students.”