The Whole Lie (23 page)

After the sentence was read, I did slide in two words Sebelius hadn't authorized:
I'm sorry,
mouthed as Savvy stared straight at me with dead eyes.

She saw the words, I knew she did.

*   *   *

“It was before I sobered up,” I said. “Savvy was … Savvy was the last person I betrayed.”

She got it. Her pupils tightened. She again set a hand on my cheek. Left it this time. “Your vow. To yourself. When you got straight. No more betrayal.”

I took her hand from my cheek, held it in both of mine.

“And in your mind,” Charlene said, “failing to catch her killer is the same as betraying her.”

“Again,” I said.

“Again,” she said. “And that's more important than…”

“Than anything.”

“Than me.”

“No.”

“Yes. Face it. Admit it.”

Her hand was cold. I rubbed it. I began to speak. Couldn't. Swallowed again. Charlene knew the word I was trying to make before I made it. She was already nodding.

“Sophie,” I said.

“It'll be hard,” she said.

“It'll kill her,” I said.

She whipped her hand from mine. “It will
not.
It will hurt. It will ache. I'll field endless questions. But it will
not
kill her. Man-deprivation is not fatal, despite what men seem to think.”

“How about father deprivation?”

It was a big roundhouse slap, not a cheesy little Audrey Hepburn slap. It hurt my neck.

Japan wasn't right. Indonesia? Why couldn't I remember where those trees were from?

The sun dropped so quickly this time of year. Charlene's face was in shadow now. Hands on hips, she shivered with cold or rage or both.

I wanted to take her in. I wanted to envelop her. She'd liked when I did that.

I couldn't do that anymore.

“My cats,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“My stuff,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Has Davey turned up yet?”

“Not as of this morning,” she said.

“Oh hell, Charlene,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

“Have you told her?” I said.

“No,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

I put my arms around her.

She resisted.

Then she didn't.

We stood that way a long time.

Her tears soaked my shirt.

Or maybe they were mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I hit Massachusetts General Hospital just after seven o'clock. Forcing myself to unwrinkle my nostrils—I hate hospital smell, never have gotten used to it—I stepped into Moe's room. Four beds, four old men, three TVs running. Moe's was turned off.

“Hell,” I said, zinging shut the curtain for whatever privacy we could get.

“Hey!” he said. “If you tell me a jet crashed on Runway Four, I'll kick your ass.”

I tried to smile. Moe looked so small, so old, so
white.
How was it hospitals leached the color out of everything and everyone?

“Jesus, Moe. If I could say how sorry I am. If I could undo it.”

We were quiet awhile. Battling TVs turned up to old-man volume, the smell, the white-on-white of the tape that held a needle in Moe's skinny arm.

Hospitals.

“He asked about you,” Moe said. “He, ah … he found me on my porch. He said ‘let's talk,' picked me up by the collar and the seat of my pants, carried me inside like a sack of oranges.
Big
fucker, Conway.
Strong
fucker.”

I waited.

“Inside, he started pounding on me while he asked about you. How did you hook up with Saginaw, what was your lever. Like that.”

“Anything else?”

“He had pictures on his mind. Kept asking about the pics, the shots, the
real
ones he called 'em. I said what the hell are you talking about. He got pissed.” His voice cracked, shook.

“Take it easy.”

But he locked eyes. He wanted me to hear it. “See, when he picked me up to carry me in,” he said, “he found my diaper. It disgusted him. Hell, it disgusts
me.
I'd advise you to never get old, but it looks like you're doing okay on that front.”

Moe Coover half-laughed. The other half was a sob.

Three TV shows blared. A machine on a rolling cart beeped and booped.

“I guess he decided I wasn't going to tell him about pictures or any other goddamn thing,” Moe said, “because he got this look on his face, half amused, half schoolyard-mean. And he reached down my pants and whipped out my diaper like a … like a fucking magician pulling a dove from his sleeve…”

“Moe.”

“… and he was smiling when he held it over my face, Conway. Smiling and wrinkling his nose, the way you are now. It's the last thing I saw, last thing I thought I'd
ever
see, this guy smearing my diaper over my face and holding it good.”

Then Moe began to cry. “I haven't told anybody else,” he said. “Not the details. I had to tell you.”

I half-rose. I kissed my friend's forehead.

I didn't know what else to do.

I sat.

“I don't know if this helps,” I said, “But the dude, Vernon's his name, is done. I'm going to take care of him.”

He looked at me maybe fifteen seconds. “Knock it off, Conway. Don't make things worse.”

“He killed Savvy, too.”

“So let the cops get him.”

“Cops don't even know he exists. But I do. Just a matter of tracking him down. And then he's … he's all done.”

Even now, Moe was sharp. He looked at me hard. “How is it the cops don't know he exists?”

I said nothing.

We sat awhile. At some point I guess I took Moe's hand.

He faded. The beeps and boops on the machine changed rhythm. A nurse came in, checked the IV bag. I could tell she wanted me to leave, but her fussing woke Moe. “Don't worry,” he said to the nurse, “I'll chase this asshole out in two minutes.”

Her expression said that was ninety seconds too long. But she split.

“What did the others tell you on your way up?” Moe said.

“What others?”

“The Barnburners,” he said. He sounded surprised. “They left just before you got here. Want to find you, read you the riot act.” He laughed some. “You're in deep shit.”

*   *   *

Three minutes later, I stepped from the elevator and looked for signs to the chapel.

Because where else would a group of drunks be?

When I walked in, I nearly laughed. It was Mary Giarusso, Carlos Q, and Butch Feeley. The funny part was that without realizing it, they'd set up the chapel like a Barnburners meeting—three seats at the right front corner of the room, near the altar, arranged kitty-corner so they could see anybody who came in. They'd even found the only three folding chairs in the joint.

“You could've sat in the pews, guys,” I said, making my way toward them. “They look pretty comfy.”

“Shut up and sit down,” Butch said.

Whoa.

I sat in the front pew. It was like facing the parole board again.

“The fuck is wrong with you, man?” said Carlos Q, the Colombian. It came out
The fock is wrong witchoo, mang?
Carlos Q sounded exactly like a bad
Scarface
impression. But as far as I knew, nobody'd ever been dumb enough to tell him so.

“How many meetings have you been to this month?” Mary said.

“It's not a numbers game,” I said.

“Hell it's not,” Butch said. “Bring the body, the mind follows. Leave the body at home…” He shrugged.

I bowed my head. I would take it. I deserved it.

“When's the last time you checked in with your sponsor?” Mary said.

“A while,” I said.

“Six weeks!” she said. “Yes, I checked. Don't look at me that way, Conway Sax. I'm
worried
about you.”

It was quiet awhile.

“We're all worried,” Butch said.

“The things you do, the burdens,” Carlos Q said, tapping his shoulders. “Heavy. Maybe too heavy too long.”

“No,” I said. “I can take the load.”

“Then take it,” Butch said. “Bear it. Or pass it along to someone who can.”

They all rose at once, filing past me on their way out. “Please fold the chairs before you leave,” Mary said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“If there was a coffee urn,” she said, not liking my tone, “I'd make you clean it. If I could find a mop, and believe you me I looked, I'd make you swab the floors. Do you some good.”

Carlos laid a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Serious AA,” he said.

“For serious people,” I said, completing the Barnburners motto.

Butch came last. “I want you to do ninety meetings in ninety days,” he said. “Get you some routine. Get you some humility.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't ‘sir' me. I work for a living.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was an old joke between us. But neither of us smiled this time.

They left me alone.

I knelt.

I tried to pray.

But couldn't.

It happens. It's a bad sign. Means I'm all screwed up in ways I half understand. But only half.

Frustrating.

I hit my knees, steepled my hands.

I tried.

It didn't take.

“Ow,” I said. Didn't know why. But the word felt right.

“Ow,” I said again.

I shook.

I knelt.

I steepled my hands.

I didn't pray.

I wanted a drink.

I wanted a drink so bad.

Worse than I had since becoming a Barnburner.

I thought about my early Barnburner days.

I'd been sober a few months but was white-knuckling it, marking time until I picked up again. I'd hitched a ride to this meeting at Saint Anne's in Framingham mostly because the car ride would be warm—it was February—and the guy who brought me promised they had better donuts than most meetings.

I'd known right away something was different about this group that called itself the Barnburners. They took no shit. They brooked no foolishness. Anybody who was serious about staying sober was welcome. Anybody who wasn't got the bum's rush.

I liked it. I was curious. I kept coming around until I got invited to the Meeting After the Meeting.

The Meeting After the Meeting was a tough crowd. Words meant shit. Deeds meant everything.

It was the first team I'd ever stuck with, the first group that ever thought I was worth much of anything.

My eyes snapped open. I wasn't about to give up my role now.

But Carlos Q had figured me out. There was weight to everything I did. Maybe it added up gradually. Maybe every ex-boyfriend I beat up, every douchebag boss I set straight, every debt I cancelled sat on my shoulders like a feather.

A ton of feathers weighs a ton.

I folded the three chairs, set them neatly in a corner.

I walked from the chapel shaking only a little.

*   *   *

An hour later I locked my truck, grabbed my duffel and sleeping bag, eyeballed Floriano's house. Sighed.

It was this or the Red Roof Inn.

The sleeping bag, the duffel, and everything in it were twenty minutes old. I'd made a Walmart run rather than drive to Charlene's to fetch gear. The idea of walking into her house, seeing hope on Sophie's face, then wiping out that hope … I couldn't stand it. It made me blue.

It made me thirsty.

Cut the shit.

Floriano either heard my truck or looked out the window at the right time: He opened the oak door before I knocked. The door's a beauty, original to the 1895 house. It's flanked by a pair of stained-glass panels, floor to ceiling, that have miraculously survived in this neighborhood. Floriano was once offered thirty grand just for the stained glass by a Back Bay antique dealer. He turned down the offer. Stubborn.

We looked at each other awhile.

“The stain job we did on that door is holding up,” I said.

“Was a long time ago,” Floriano said.

“That's what I'm saying,” I said.

The Mendes house: warm, meat smells left over from the family's typical late dinner, dishwasher hum, homework-done-getting-ready-for-bed vibe.

From the entry I could see the dining room, with identically framed images of Jesus Christ and Ayrton Senna, the best driver Floriano and I ever saw. Senna, a Brazilian, died in a wreck when he was thirty-four.

I nodded at the curved staircase. “Maria?”

“Putting the girls to bed.”

“I don't want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble, Connie.” He didn't quite meet my eye as he said it. “You want a sofa up here? Or the cot downstairs?”

With an assist from his two older sons, who now ran a for-profit recycling outfit that was growing like crazy, Floriano and I had finished the basement long ago. Put in a bathroom, the works.

“Cot's fine,” I said.

“Well then,” he said, and looked at his hardwood floor. “Long day tomorrow—”

“Long day today—” I said at the exact same time.

My friend finally looked me in the eye. We laughed a little. I thought he was going to say more. But he didn't.

“Cot's fine,” I said, stepping to the basement door.

And it was, I thought. Post-shower, in my sleeping bag atop the cot, hands folded behind my head. Ticking off things that had happened that day. A hell of a lot of things.

No wonder I was tired.

I sighed. I rolled off the cot. I hit my knees and steepled my hands like an eight-year-old girl. I tried again to pray.

It didn't take.

I tried. Really. But instead of the relaxed hum and loose thought chains I was looking for, I got Moe pictures. So tiny in his hospital bed, white on white on white.