Say Nice Things About Detroit (10 page)

S
HE MADE A
glass of tonic water, something to soothe her stomach. She should never have asked Kevin. You didn't ask your children where they wanted to live, you told them. When had parenting become a game of deference? Kevin would adjust. Kids always did.

She finished most of her drink, topped off the glass, and called David from her cell phone. She was leaning on the kitchen counter, its granite the color of slate. He answered on the first ring.

“I don't like it that you're living with your husband,” he told her.

“That's a ridiculous thing to say.”

“No, it isn't. It's the truth.”

“You're jealous?”

“Of course,” he said. She felt a jolt, a flush in her cheeks. Jealousy was supposed to be an ugly emotion, and maybe it was, but she thought it an honest one.

“How come you've never had children?” she asked.

“I have,” he answered.

A son, who'd died in a car crash. As he told the story she heard the agony in his voice. It embarrassed her, how easy her life was. How could she feel sorry for herself for being pregnant when this man had lost a child? And here she was, carrying his child.

“I'm very sorry,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Really, Carolyn? I don't like to talk about it.”

She hung up and decided she would go back home. She couldn't stay in L.A., keeping up appearances, walking around divorced and pregnant with another man's child. She could be close to David. Tell him the news in person. However he reacted, she'd get through it. She'd be home, and when you had to start over, that was a good place to start.

III

M
ONDAY MORNING HE
was watching the snow flurries dance outside his office window when he got a call from Shelly Burton. “Listen,” she said. “You bought a house yet?”

“I'm renting.”

“How'd you like to buy mine?” she said. She named a price. It made him consider the house. Even in Denver it would be four times what she was asking.

“That's all you want?” he asked.

“You're a hell of a negotiator.”

He didn't know what to say.

“Welcome to Detroit, Mr. Halpert.”

“I guess I should come out and look at it.”

“Come by four,” she said, “before it gets dark.”

The wood and copper alone had to be worth what she was asking. More important, he liked the home, the feel of it, the stained wood that gave off an air of permanence. Still, the house was inside the city limits of Detroit, and thus in a black neighborhood. This would put off most white people; it was one of the reasons the house was so cheap, which for him made it all the better. He liked the idea of doing what others wouldn't.

• • •

H
E WAS DRIVING
up Livernois when his dashboard started ringing. It was Julie calling. They hadn't spoken in a couple years.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi, David. How are you?”

“I'm well. You?” They'd been married fourteen years. It always struck him as odd, because he couldn't say that he missed her, just that he missed being married. For a long time he felt it was the one thing he'd gotten right, but then, after Cory's death, it fell apart. He didn't blame her. They'd made a good run at it, but, after Cory died it didn't work anymore. Hearing her voice was still difficult.

“I'm in Denver,” she said. “I know it's been a while, but I'm going to visit Cory and thought maybe you'd want to come with me.”

Cory was buried in a cemetery on the west side of Denver. David had chosen the spot because it was close to the mountains. For a while he'd gone there once a week, then once a month, and then less often. He learned there was no comfort in it.

“I'm in Detroit,” he said.

“Oh, too bad. You visiting your folks?”

“Actually, I moved here.”

“You what? No way.”

“Way,” he said.

“Wow. You going to get a job back there?”

“Already got one.”

“Well, I bet your parents like having you back.”

“They seem to,” he said.

“Wow, David. I wouldn't have guessed Detroit.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“It wasn't your fault,” she told him. “I know you think it was, but you're wrong.”

“I'll try to believe you.”

“I'm sorry I missed you. Maybe next time.”

“Maybe,” he allowed.

• • •

H
E HAD TO
admit it was a beautiful home. He'd loved the bookcase-lined living room that he remembered from his one visit. There was also a separate dining room, a large kitchen with a walk-in pantry. A wide front staircase grew right out of the large foyer. Upstairs were three bedrooms and an office. There was a guest bedroom downstairs on the main level. The master bathroom was bigger than David's office at work, with a new glass-enclosed shower but also a free-standing claw-footed tub, something out of an earlier, more prosperous era.

Cory, he thought, would have loved this place. He would have sprinted across the vast wooden floors downstairs. He would have slid down the wooden banister, then jumped two-footed into the entryway.

“It's beautiful,” he told Shelly.

“You'd be the only white person on the block,” she said. “Besides Mr. Belinski.”

“Who's Mr. Belinski?”

“Some old white guy about two hundred years old. Fifteen years ago he killed someone breaking into his home. The shots woke Dirk up. He went there, helped him.”

“Some neighborhood.”

“Been no trouble since, even on Devil's Night,” Shelly said.

Devil's Night was the night before Halloween. For years people had been setting houses on fire, just to watch them burn. Things were calmer now, but the whole thing shook your idea of how the world worked. It wasn't the Vandals or the Goths sacking Rome, it was as if the Romans were doing it.

His cell phone rang again. He excused himself and walked down the hallway. It was Carolyn. He knew because he'd programmed a special ring for her. “Hey there.” He tried to sound happy that she was calling, which he was.

“I thought you should know I'm coming to Detroit for Thanksgiving,” she said. “And I'm spending the week after.”

“Great,” he said. He wanted to ask whether he could see her, but he didn't.

“I'm bringing Kevin, my son. Going to my high school reunion.”

“Sounds great.”

“You sound weird,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I'm in your brother's house.”

“Why?”

“I might buy it.”

“You must be out of your mind.”

He admitted that she might be right.

IV

S
OL GOT THE
call a little after four in the afternoon. He was in bed, reading. It was one of the joys of retirement, never being needed at four in the afternoon.

“Mr. Halpert, this is Jerome Stith from Orchard Grove. I'm afraid there's been an accident.”

Sol immediately knew it was serious. Usually he got calls from one of the Jamaican women. He loved the song in their voices as they gave him updates on Trudy. If it was a financial matter, he heard from a woman with the hard consonants and short vowels of his native city. Hearing from a man was a first.

“Mrs. Halpert has been taken to the hospital. She had a fall. It's quite serious.”

He called David, but the kid was down in Detroit, it was rush hour, and Sol didn't want to wait at home for forty-five minutes to get picked up. And so he drove himself, once he'd brushed his hair and put on a pressed shirt and clean socks. At the hospital, he found Stith waiting outside Trudy's room, wearing a dark suit, like an undertaker. Sol's wife was unconscious, with a bruise on the left side of her face. She had a hairline fracture in her hip. The galumph had fallen on Trudy. None of the staff had actually seen it happen, and neither Trudy nor the galumph could remember the details. One of the other inmates said the galumph had tackled her.

“Tackled?” Sol asked. “What do you mean, tackled?”

“No one really knows what happened,” Stith said. “All the witnesses are advanced Alzheimer cases.”

Sol fumed, looked to Trudy, back to Stith, then back to Trudy again.

“Can I have some privacy?”

Sol heard Stith's retreating footfalls as he moved to the bed. He stood looking at her until David arrived. He studied his mother and then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Sol realized it had never occurred to him to do that. He thanked God David was home.

“Should we sue the home?” he asked David. They were sitting by Trudy's bed, watching her sleep. A curtain separated her from the other patient. Sol spoke softly, not wanting anyone but David to hear him.

“You've got a case, perhaps, but I don't know what you'd get.”

“Satisfaction?”

“I doubt that, Dad.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think he tackled her.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I Googled him. He played defensive end for the Lions in the fifties. My guess is that he tackled Mom to show off for her, or just to get her approval.”

“That's insane,” Sol said.

“It's what men do,” David said.

V

C
AROLYN SAT AT
one of the outside tables at the Starbucks on Beverly while around her the citizens of Beverly Hills went about their Saturday morning routines in Mercedes, BMWs, and Lexuses. It was a little after ten, and already seventy degrees.

She had just dropped Kevin at soccer practice, after which he was going to Bobby Keane's house for the day and a sleepover. Marty was playing golf. It was wonderful to be alone, surrounded by strangers, to sit in the sun and sip a mocha and not have to be anywhere.

Still, she noticed that her pants were tight. Just that week she'd had amnio; she expected the main results by Tuesday. She'd also requested a paternity test.

“You're not sure who the father is?” the nurse asked. The woman seemed scandalized. Probably they didn't get many of these in Beverly Hills.

Carolyn was standing at the check-in counter. Now she leaned forward and spoke softly, so as not to be heard in the waiting room. “I've got a pretty good idea.”

The nurse raised her eyebrows.

“But I need to be sure,” Carolyn said. She handed over Marty's toothbrush. There was an outside company that did the paternity test for seven hundred bucks. They promised results Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Then she'd know for sure, though she really knew already.

• • •

S
HE NEEDED MATERNITY
clothes, so she decided to walk down to a maternity shop where she'd often bought gifts for others. She moved slowly and carried her mocha, intending to buy a couple things, the first subtle outfits that would give nothing away. She didn't want to tell anyone at work. At least, not yet.

Carolyn walked into the store and there was Mandy, her therapist, buying clothes for her pregnant daughter. “Did you talk to Marty?” she asked in a whisper.

“I did.” Lately, so many of Carolyn's conversations required whispers.

“And how did it go?”

“He called me despicable.”

“What did you say?” Mandy asked.

“I told him I appreciated his opinion,” Carolyn said. Mandy had taught her to say this. It meant
Fuck you.

“I'll get all the details this week,” Mandy said. They had an appointment Tuesday. The talk with Marty hadn't been so bad, really. Once Carolyn said she didn't want alimony, he had given in on everything else.

“You'll be fine,” Mandy said. Carolyn thought Mandy might actually be right. She left the store without buying.

VI

H
IS MOTHER SPENT
the night in the hospital. Now David drove his father's car, the steering wheel practically bumping his chest. Sol wouldn't let him adjust the seat, said he'd never get it back to just where he liked it. David wasn't even allowed to put music on the radio, which in Detroit seemed like a crime.

“Dad, what are you going to do if Mom dies?”

“I'm going to stop going to that damn home,” Sol said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Son, she's already gone. Has been for some time.”

They parked and walked into the hospital, David shuffling beside his father, trying to keep his pace, not rushing him. The sky hung gray and low; the air was damp and raw, and it was easy to think it portended something, but really it was always this way this time of year. Still, David sensed they were near the end with his mother—a call so early could hardly mean otherwise.

They were intercepted at the nurses' station and led to a small meeting room off a larger waiting area. The nurse offered them coffee. “Let me get the doctor,” she said.

His complexion was dark, this doctor, his eyes baggy and hooded, a veneer of stubble above them that covered his head. “I'm Dr. Czerny,” he said. “I'm very sorry, but Mrs. Halpert has died.”

“Of what?” Sol wanted to know.

“Her injuries. I was paged around two this morning. The nurses noticed she was developing problems with her respiration and blood pressure. It would seem she had a ruptured spleen.”

“You couldn't figure this out yesterday when they brought her in?” David asked. It was, he knew, the question to ask, but what did it matter now?

The doctor started to speak but stopped, and then David became aware of his father. They were all sitting around a table of fake wood, the kind of thing you'd find in a breakfast nook. The walls were plain, the color of paste. His father's shoulders were jerking, almost heaving. And then they heaved. “Oh God,” Sol said, and the tears came. David gave a quick glimpse at the doctor and then pushed his chair back, knelt by his father. He put an arm around his father's back. “It's all right, Dad,” he said. “It's over.”