Torch Song (5 page)

Constance shook her head. “It must take him longer to eat the food than for you to prepare it. Will he eat much of it?”

Marla seemed to sag, then straightened again and walked to the table across the room. “He eats enough,” she said, gazing out the wide windows.

A long ramp went to the back of the yard; there was a concrete walk that curved around bushes and trees. Thick, high shrubbery screened the entire back; no other house was visible. The back section looked well tended, with several raised flower beds. “You work out there?” Constance asked.

Marla nodded. “He likes to be outside, watch me plant things, weed, pick flowers.”

“Why do you stay here, so isolated? It must be lonely for you.”

“Boseman did that to me,” Marla said after a moment. “I can't sell the house, or his car, or anything. I can use it for as long as I want to, but I can't sell out. I'm stuck here. He did that.”

“What about Boseman?” Constance asked. “How on earth did such a man enter your life, yours and Nathan's?”

Marla went to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass. “Funny,” she said. “No one ever asked that. They asked everything else, but not that.” She glanced at Constance, who had moved to stand beside her at the window. “He got the gun for Pete, and the car; he knew all about it. Later, when Nathan was in the hospital, he came around, to collect what Pete owed him, he said. I told him to go talk to Pete. He wanted to make out with me. You know? And I said no. He asked what it would take and I said a ring, the piece of paper, the whole works. He laughed. But then he said, ‘Why not?' I thought he meant it, but he had me sign papers, and after he was gone, I found out what I'd signed. We can stay here, I can drive the Buick, but nothing's mine, except the Datsun. His mother gets it all the day I leave.” Tiredly, she added, “I'll stay; it's a good home for Nathan, better than anything I could afford.”

Constance wished Marla would sit at the table so she could sit across from her and study her face as she spoke. The profile told her nothing. Her sweater was a very fine cashmere and the earrings were dangling garnets. Not cheap, but not insurable jewelry, either. She didn't look destitute, Constance decided, and got no further than that with her examination.

“At first,” Marla was saying in a low voice, “he thought I knew where the money was, where Pete had stashed it, and he thought he'd get me and the money sooner or later, but when he saw that I really didn't know, he began to change. He taught me how to drive and bought the little Datsun for me. He wanted to take a trip, a late honeymoon.”

“Ah,” Constance said thoughtfully. “So he didn't object when you continued to go visit Pete.”

Marla gave her a sharp look. “He wanted me to go. He thought Pete would tell me someday.”

“How did Pete take it when you got married?”

“Look, we thought he was going to be up there for twenty-five years. He knew I couldn't keep Nathan without help. He was all for it ‘Take him for all you can,' that's what he said.”

“And you kept visiting him all these years,” Constance said. “Why did you, Marla?”

She shrugged. “You think I haven't asked myself that more than once? Habit, maybe? The only guy I felt safe around, maybe? I met a girl who makes jewelry. She showed me some pieces she was taking to show her husband. He's in for life. Anyway, it was neat stuff, earrings, necklaces, things like that. She gave me these,” she said, fingering an earring. “I told her she could sell jewelry like that and she said no way. She had three kids, a full-time job, and lived up by Saranac Lake. She never even saw New York City. So I bet her I could sell it. I took a few pieces down to SoHo and sold them, and she gave me twenty-five percent. It was like fate gave me a break. If I hadn't been going to see Pete, I never would have met her, and others like her. I'm a jewelry rep—can you believe it?”

Constance nodded, but before she spoke, Marla faced her and said angrily, “You want to know what a bind is? Let me tell you. It's when you have a sick kid and no money and have to get a job, but if you leave him to work, the state will take him away and put him in an institution so he'll get the kind of care he needs. That kind of care would kill him. That's a bind.”

“The state pays for his medical care, doesn't it?” Constance said, not so much a question as a statement of fact.

“They have to. They did it to him; they take care of him. Someone like Roy an hour or two a day, and respite care. You know what respite care is? I get a day and a half off each week. At first, I wouldn't leave even that much. They were just looking for an excuse to take him away from me, claim I was neglecting him, something like that.” Her cheeks flared as she spoke rapidly. “I fainted a couple of times and the doctor said it was stress, that I needed to get away now and then and that no one could hold it against me. It was my right. If I got sick, they'd take him in a hurry, and if I didn't have some time off, I'd get sick. Sheila showed up with her jewelry about then and I was in business. I take my respite days all at once, five, six days in a row, make my rounds, take the jewelry down to New York, and next month do it again. Nathan hates it, but I figure he can put up with someone like Roy for a few days if it means I get to keep him with me the rest of the time. And it does.”

“That's a terrible burden to shoulder alone,” Constance said. “Why didn't Pete tell you where the money was, help out that way?”

Marla went to the hallway and cocked her head, listening. No sound came from upstairs. “He knew they'd be watching for me to come up with money,” she said scornfully. “That would really have been stupid.” She stayed by the hall door now, still listening.

“I suppose so,” Constance said. “It just seems so unfair. Did he think you'd get back together when he got out?”

“Yeah,” Marla said after a moment. “He thought so, and I guess I did, too. He said he had a few things he had to take care of first, and we had to be cool, not lead anyone to the money, just wait for the right time and then take off for Spain. We talked like that, and it was like having a dream over and over. You know? You hate to wake up because it's such a good dream. I used to take Nathan's pictures to show him, and I told him how Nathan was getting along. Pete knew all about him. But when he walked in and took one look, he said we'd have to put him in a hospital or an institution. We had a fight. I kicked him out and he stayed out. I guess he got the money and went to Spain or somewhere like that.”

Constance shook her head. “We think he's still hanging around. How did he get here from Attica? He got out on the tenth and came here on the twelfth. Where was he those two days?”

“He didn't say,” Marla said coldly. “He called me from the bus station in Tuxedo Park, and as soon as Roy got here, I went over and picked him up. The next day when Roy got here, I took him back.” She added bitterly, “He slept on the sofa that night.”

She stepped into the hall to listen again, and this time when she came back, she checked the wall clock in the kitchen. “Look, why don't you and your husband just leave. I told you he came here and then he went away. That's all I know. I haven't seen him or heard from him, and I don't expect to. I've got to go up and see to Nathan and feed him some dinner. Just go away.”

Almost as if on cue, Charlie entered the kitchen then. “Ready?” he asked Constance.

She nodded. “We'll come back tomorrow,” she said to Marla. “Just a few more details we need to clear up. It shouldn't take long. Is this Roy's usual time? Between three and five?”

“Get out of here!” Marla cried. “Just get the hell out of here!” She hurried across the kitchen and punched in numbers on the microwave, turned it on.

Charlie took Constance by the arm and they walked through the house to the front door and left. Neither spoke until they got inside the car and were heading back out the narrow black road. Then Charlie asked, “What was that all about?”

“She's lying,” Constance said. “I'm not sure yet how much, or when she turned the lies on and turned them off. She alternated, I think. But she most certainly is lying.”

“You sure?”

“Yes indeed. She claims to be living in poverty and yet she's wearing a five-hundred-dollar sweater and earrings that cost about that much. And she called you my husband, but no one mentioned anything like that to her at any time. Did we?”

He squeezed her thigh lightly.

“Okay,” he said when they were in their motel room. “Change of game plan. We can't see Marla until after three, and there's no need to ask too many questions around these parts, so let's breeze over to Middletown in the morning and come back here in the afternoon.”

She eyed him narrowly. “You turned on Roy's talk switch?”

“Sure did, but you first. Give. Or do you want something to drink first?”

The motel room was a minisuite, a king-size bed on one side and a little sitting room on the other, with a sofa, two chairs, and a low table, where Charlie's feet now rested.

“Drink,” she said, getting up to cross the room to their suitcase and a shopping bag. She took a bottle of wine from the bag and held it up for him to see. “No expense account, no room service. Right? I came prepared.”

Then, as they sipped wine from water glasses, she told him in detail what Marla had said. “My problem,” she said when she finished, “is that I know she was lying, but not about what or when. For instance, I think she noticed that I had appraised her earrings, and she came up with a story that sounded plausible at the moment but really isn't. A woman scraping by with three kids doesn't give away jewelry that would bring in hundreds of dollars. And that sweater, not what you wear in the kitchen pureeing food. Splatters…” There were other things not quite right, she was certain, but she needed time to sort them out. “Your turn.”

“Roy lives on the road between Cedar Falls and Tuxedo Park,” Charlie said. “He knows everyone in the county. He thinks she's a saint and she's blind to the truth about the boy. She gives him parties, puts up a Christmas tree, the whole thing. He has the brain waves of a vegetable, according to Roy, who is a hospital orderly, by the way. Up until two years ago, they didn't have the ramp, and she carried him downstairs to take him outside, gave him his baths, and had in a handler when she had to go out, and for the five or six days she takes off. That's what he says he is—a handler; the kid's past therapy. A couple of years ago, the boy began to grow, until she couldn't lift him. Roy stops in there every morning, gets the boy out of bed and into the wheelchair, and goes back later to give him a bath and get him back in bed.” He poured himself more wine and stood at the table, swirling it in his glass. “It's been hell for her,” he said quietly. “She's done it all alone.”

Constance knew he was remembering the day of the wreck, when the infant Nathan had been thrown out of the car. She made a motion as if to reach for him, but, oblivious, he returned to his chair.

“So,” he said, “Roy was there the day Pete arrived. She went out and brought Pete back. The next day, while he was giving the boy his bath, she said she had to go out again, that Pete was leaving. They were fighting, he said, yelling at each other. Everyone in Cedar Falls probably saw her drive by with Pete; they all knew the ex-con was there, and they were afraid he might stay. They saw her drive back without him. Roy says if she sneezed, the whole town held its breath for fear they'd catch whatever she had. She scandalized them the first time she showed up at the supermarket with food stamps. She was a loner from day one and is still a loner. Roy thinks she has a boyfriend out there on the road, hopes she does. He said she comes home with presents now and then, but she doesn't confide in him, hardly even talks to him except about Nathan. She's real close with money, does things herself or lets them go for the most part, and she nurses the cars along. He says she takes the gangster car, Boseman's Buick—they call him Grossman around these parts—out on the highway to keep it running well, because that's her emergency car for when Nathan has to go to the hospital for a checkup or something. He's had about a dozen operations over the years, and he has seizures. Other times, she drives a little red Datsun that's twelve years old, Boseman's wedding present. Everyone in Cedar Falls hates that Datsun. They don't think a person like her should be allowed to live in a big, expensive house and let it go to ruin, and drive a heap like that around to shame them all.”

His voice had gone very flat. “So there it is. Pete came and Pete went away. I think we're back to where we started from, honey.”

They were both silent then until Constance asked, “How much does this room cost?”

“Ninety per. It's off-season. Why?”

“I don't know. It's just that if she's so broke, how can she afford to stay in motels every month, eat meals out for five or six days? How much money could she be making with that jewelry? It seems she must be spending it all just to survive on the road.”

“If it's her therapy, maybe she figures it's worthwhile even if she loses money,” he commented.

She felt a twinge of annoyance with him. Someone had paid for that ramp, she thought, and the expensive wheelchair with a motor. The state didn't provide that kind of chair. And the pricey sweater and earrings… and insurance for two cars, utilities for a house that size… Even as she thought this, she felt disgust for herself rising. So what if Marla had a rich friend? Or what if she was into something illegal herself? Her devotion to her son was real; her care in preparing his food, her steadfast refusal to surrender him to anyone, to risk losing him, that made up for a lot. She had no doubt that Nathan would have died long ago without her constant attention.

A few minutes later when Charlie said maybe they should think about food pretty soon, she agreed readily. No more brooding about Marla and Pete, she told herself. Think food thoughts, she added, remembering the Victorian house they had seen. Not being on an expense account did not mean they had to eat at McDonald's, she also told herself, and she suggested aloud that they should call Chelsey House for a reservation.