Lovely, Dark, and Deep (6 page)

Sandra was waiting for me in the kitchen when I returned. “What can I do to help you, Madeline?” she asked.

I liked her already. “Well, if you don't mind keeping an eye on that garlic bread in the oven, and then putting it in that basket there when it's done. Here's a cloth for the top, to keep it warm.” I tossed her a little red linen napkin, almost playfully. I found that I felt comfortable with Sandra, even though I hadn't exchanged more than a few words with her. I got only good vibes, and it filled me with relief. I looked into all of Jack's pots and pans, keeping an eye on his handiwork while he picked and strummed out a serviceable version of
Thumbelina
. I peeked into the living room and saw little Veronica leaping around, her ballerina skirt flying dramatically this way and that. It wasn't so much dancing as it was exercising, but it was incredibly cute, and my mother's face was priceless.

I came back to the stove, stole a glance at Sandra. “My mother is in love with your daughter,” I commented.

Sandra heaved a sigh. “I'm so relieved. I'd heard that your mother could be kind of intimidating, but I'm not really seeing it.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, I'll have to remember to carry a tiny little girl in my pocket. What is she, three?”

“Yes. She'll be four in May.” Sandra donned an oven mitt and peeked in at the garlic bread. “Gerhard says he wants to throw her a pony party. I think that's a bit much. Gerhard spoils her.”

“So . . . are things pretty serious? Between you and Gerhard?” I asked casually, pouring some noodles into boiling water.

Sandra looked at me with a big, mushy smile, and I saw the truth. “I love him, Madeline. I just love him so much. I don't know why I'm telling you, because I have yet to tell him.”

“Really? Would you like
me
to tell him?” I joked.

Silence greeted this statement and I stopped stirring. I felt that I might be on the verge of a female confidence, and I suddenly didn't want that. I tore my gaze away from the noodles to see that she was staring somberly at me. “He's obviously crazy about you, and Veronica. If I know Gerhard, he's probably walking around with a diamond in his pocket,” I said.

Sandra nodded, and suddenly, inexplicably, big tears were rolling down her face. Oh, no! I thought. I scanned my mind for various excuses to leave the room. It was too late. Sandra had started.

“Madeline, you must think I'm nuts, getting emotional, telling you these things when I don't know you. But I feel like I do know you. Gerhard has told me so much; and then he talked about you a lot when you were in the hospital, when you were . . . you know. He was so worried, and he told me all sorts of stories about when you were a little girl, and he told me how much he loved you.”

This was shocking to me, because Gerhard hadn't actually said the word "love" to me in years and years. When he came to visit me in the hospital, his expression, his actions told me he loved me, but he didn't say it. He'd said it to Sandra.

“Anyway, I see how much his family means to him, and I don't want to ruin anything for Gerhard, or the family. I screwed up the whole order of things already. I got pregnant by a guy who was a jerk, I didn't get married, and only my parents were with me when I had Veronica. And she's been my whole life, and I don't know how to be in love with anyone except her. At least that's what I thought. And then I met Gerhard. Do you know what he said to me, Madeline, when I met him at the movie theatre? Veronica and I were there seeing a special showing of
Mary Poppins
on the big screen, and—”

“Wait—what was Gerhard doing there?” I interrupted.

"I—well, I guess he was seeing the movie. He was embarrassed to admit it, at the time, which is so sweet. But I recognized him, you see. We'd met once before, at a party. He'd been there with a friend of mine, and we had talked briefly. Anyway, Veronica and I went to
Mary Poppins,
and there he was."

“O-
kay
,” I said. As a kid Gerhard had always had a thing for Julie Andrews, but I didn't know he'd dragged it into his adulthood. My weird brother, I thought.

“He saw that I was having trouble holding our popcorn and our drink, and Veronica, who wanted to be carried all of a sudden, and he came over and offered to carry our food. He was just so gallant, so—”

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” I asked, smirking.

Sandra considered, then said, “No,” as though I'd offered that word as a serious suggestion. She seemed kind of sarcasm-impaired. “He sat by us at the theatre. He helped me with her, even told her little jokes during the show. I don't know why he paid such attention to us.”

I looked at Sandra, at her cute petite figure, her pretty shoulder-length dark hair, her smooth skin and chocolate eyes, and thought I had a pretty good idea why Gerhard had followed, puppy-like. “So why does that mean you can't tell him the truth?” I asked. Jack was suddenly back in the room and pushing me gently away from the food. Jack didn't trust me at the stove, and with good reason.

I stood in front of Sandra, my hands on my hips, watching her nestle the last of the bread into the basket. “Because,” she said softly. “I'm afraid.”

“What's there to be afraid of? You love him, he loves you. That means you can confide in—” I saw the trap I'd walked into even before I heard Jack snort behind me. We had talked no more about the Sister Joanna interview, but I intended fully to give him all of the details after my family left. Jack might not believe this, but it was true.

I felt the warmth of a blush in my face and said, “Let's get out of here. It's too hot in this kitchen.” In the dining room I called everyone to dinner. Sandra set her bread on the table, and I winked at her. I really must be my mother's daughter, because I was all ready to pin Gerhard in a corner somewhere and solve his love problems for him. I guess that makes me kind of controlling. I generally see it as a cross I have to bear, an accident of DNA. Jack sees it as something I choose.

Still, I was loving Jack this evening, for being musician to the little dancer, for making the meal and not really taking credit.

“I made everything,” Jack said, walking in with a steaming pot of sauce. So much for his humility.

My mother had torn her glance away from Veronica, who was being seated on some phone books by my father, to give me a concerned look. She seemed to think something was amiss between Jack and me. Her radar must have been a sort of hereditary precursor to my vibes. My father, arranging Veronica, wore a doting expression. His hands lingered on her chubby little arms. “I'm remembering another little girl in a tutu,” he said, looking at me.

“I never wore a tutu,” I protested, as Jack slaved around us.

“You were a sweet little dancing angel. You took lessons from Mrs. Angelini, remember her?”

“No,” I said. I was about to change the subject to Gerhard and Sandra, who sat shyly next to one another, when Veronica looked at me.

“Should I say the prayer?” she asked loudly. For a girl of a couple feet in height, she had a voice that really carried.

I looked at her, rather taken aback. I had grown up in a home where prayers were said before every meal, and in bed at night. This was a ritual my parents still continued today, but I'd gotten away from it, and occasionally forgot, when prayer-saying company was over.

“That would be lovely,” I told Veronica.

“God watches over us,” she said, wide eyed and serious. “And Lord listens to our prayers.”

Sandra smiled. “Veronica is in Sunday school. They hear a lot of stories and parables and things. She's still kind of learning—you know—about the Trinity.”

“Aren't we all,” said Fritz with feeling, staring at the food. Fritz had never exactly been a whiz in religion class.

Veronica folded her little hands and insisted that we all do it, as well. She looked sternly around at us as she said, “Thank you for Mom, thank you for Gerhard, thank you for my dress, thank you for Grandpa and Grandma Astor, thank you for dis food—”

I suppressed the urge to look at my watch as Veronica thanked God for a litany of things. Finally she finished by thanking the Lord for every one of us. I looked at her little face, so serene as she trusted that some giant man in the sky would take care of everything for her and smile benevolently when she paid homage. I thought of Sister Moira and her simple faith.

Jack finally sat down next to me, and we began passing dishes around, one big happy family. Gerhard told us that Sandra was a teacher; that her mother watched Veronica during the day while Sandra taught second grade. “Mommy writes on the board,” Veronica said. She'd been served first, with noodles cut up small by her mother, and tiny chunks of a meatball, which she ate with a cake fork. Spaghetti sauce wreathed her lips and made her look like a miniscule clown.

Fritz spoke to her, I think for the first time. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked. His face, when he talked to her, seemed suddenly older, manlike. Fritz was my little brother, and I'd been guilty of always seeing him as a boy. Now, though, seeing him next to a human much smaller, I was more aware of his facial hair, his deep voice, the muscles in his forearms. I felt a little pang of sadness.

“I'd like to be a—hmm.” Veronica thought, playing with her noodles. “I guess I'll be a cook.”

Sandra laughed. “That's a new one,” she said.

“Not a ballerina?” asked my mother.

“That, too,” said the little girl.

We all laughed, and then, pursuing something that had been in my mind since the prayer, I said, “So your last name is Astor, Sandra?” She nodded at me, and drank some wine. “You're not related to someone named Rick Astor, are you?” I asked.

Sandra's eyes widened with surprise. “My dad is Rick Astor.”

I really hate coincidences, because they seem somehow sinister to me, as though everything has been planned in advance by people who are watching your reaction when you find out. They also seem, once you experience them, somehow inevitable.

Everyone stared at me. I cleared my throat. “Is he a reporter? Or was he once?”

Sandra cocked her head like a confused puppy. “He used to write for the paper here in Webley. The paper you write for—the
Wire
. Now he writes for
Success
Magazine.”

Wow.
Success
was a glossy monthly geared toward the affluent, the sophisticated. I imagined it was a pretty cushy job, working there. “I ran across one of his old stories today, and then I noticed the name, when Veronica was saying the prayer.”

“How neat,” said Sandra, cutting a bit of sausage in half.

“I actually need to get in touch with him, so maybe you can help me out with that.”

This surprised everyone at the table, despite the fact that I am a reporter, and need to interview people all of the time. My family sometimes seemed to see my profession as some kind of hobby that they didn't need to take seriously. They all peered at me now, some chewing, some not.

“Why do you need to contact Mr. Astor?” my mother asked.

“He covered a story many years ago, a story we're looking into again.” I tried not to look at Jack, but some sort of magnetic force made my eyes lock onto his. He was trying hard to wear no expression at all, but I knew better. Just a touch of a tremor at the corner of his lip suggested he was feeling an emotion, and possibly biting back some words.

“Anyway, I need to ask him questions. He's a crucial link in a case that's been dead a long time.”

Gerhard raised his eyebrows. “What's the case, Madeline? Why be so mysterious?”

I wasn't sure why, but I knew I didn't want to mention it to those assembled at the table. Bad vibes, back for another visit. Then again, sometimes I just feel the need to, as we said in kindergarten, “act big.” “Uh—actually, it's the investigation into the death of Sister Joanna,” I said, looking at my bread.

There was silence, so I looked up. Most faces just looked surprised. My father looked quite interested; Sandra's response, however, was the least expected. She adjusted Veronica's bib, and looked at me with something like anger.

“Why that case?” she asked. “My father covered all kinds of news for that paper. Why the Sister Joanna story?”

“I can't really go into that right now,” I said hesitantly. “It's just something that I find I have to look into. I found your dad's name in the byline, that's all.”

Sandra continued to look stormy, and Gerhard leaned toward her, sending me a glance that was half baleful, half confused. He was protecting her, but he didn't know what from.

“My father got fired over that story,” she said softly.

The vibe I got from that information was so strong it made me push my plate away. Why would Rick Astor be fired for his reporting on the story of Sister Joanna? How could this case have been dropped when everything I encountered pointed to something mysterious? I knew that I had to see Rick Astor soon.

“No way!” yelled Fritz, obviously enjoying the growing tension. “What for? Did he use obscenities or something?”

“Fritz,” my mother hissed. “Little ears.”

Fritz looked at her, wearing a fake confused face. “What? Obscenities isn't a bad word, it's
about
bad words.”

Veronica, finally done feeding her little face, shared some news: “I know a bad word.”

Sandra blushed and hurried to say, “No you don't.” She tried to distract Veronica with a picture of a pine cone on the paper napkin. (They were left over from Christmas).

“Yes, I do,” said the little imp, ignoring her mother. “Butt.”

This sent Fritz and Gerhard into gales of laughter. Even my mother looked as though she'd like to indulge, but had to maintain her dignity as the noble matriarch at the table. Jack smiled, stood up, and started to clear plates. “Dessert and coffee in the living room in about half an hour,” he said, as people started to make leaving motions.

Veronica treated us to an after-dinner prayer that was shorter but less understandable than the previous one, and then we went into the next room in search of comfortable chairs. I grabbed Sandra in the kitchen doorway. “Listen, I didn't mean to upset you. But I really do need to talk to your dad, so you could save me some leg work if you wrote down his number.”