Riggs Park Part 18

"I was running away from my father," he said. "I was doing you a favor."

I swallowed hard. "Not a favor. Not even close."

Outside, an undecided rain began, fell in fits and starts onto the roof and into the ocean. Jon reached over and switched on a lamp. It shed the kindest, gentlest light.

"The irony," he said, "was that except for losing you, my life was better. I would have been a lousy doctor. I would have hated being around sickness and death. I liked writing about sports. Maybe I would never have been a world-cla.s.s swimmer anyway, but after I broke my shoulder I missed it. Writing about sports was like a way of having it back." He leaned toward the coffee table that separated us. "But Barbara-I missed you every day of my life."

I felt myself softening, then caught myself. "Don't be melodramatic," I snapped. "How did you find out about the baby?"

"From my father. A deathbed confession. He probably would have told me a lot sooner if I hadn't been avoiding him for twenty years."

"Your father knew?"

"Penny told him," Jon said. "She told him the day she walked back into his shop with that gun."

"Oh, my G.o.d."

"I told you it was worse than you thought."

I understood everything then, even before he told me the rest. I had known much of it before; all Jon had to do was fill in the blanks.

Of course, I kept thinking. Of course.

Penny had gone into Wishner's Upholstery Shop for the second and last time in October 1964, six months after the birth of her daughter. On this visit, as opposed to the previous one, she came armed with a pistol she'd bought at a p.a.w.n shop the week before. It was late on a sunny, crisp afternoon. She waited outside until all the employees had gone home, leaving only Murray Wishner in the office. Penny was wearing black slacks and a black sweater, colors she never wore because with her red hair she believed they made her look washed out. In her pocket was the poetic note Steve would later put to music.

Later, Murray told the police Penny had come to the shop looking for the laborer who had a.s.saulted her back in the fifties. "Of course we'd fired the jerk right away. Years ago. He would have been arrested except that Penny clammed up. Who knows where the guy is by now?

"Penny knew that laborer wasn't at the shop anymore," he'd said angrily. "It was crazy. She was crazy."

Not until his final day of life, confessing to the son who'd fled from him after Penny's visit to Camp Chesapeake, did Murray amend this story. Jon had come to his father's bedside only because his mother begged, and he was not prepared for what he was about to hear. But Murray had been in the final stages of congestive heart failure and had had no reason to lie.

"He looked like-Terrible. Dying," Jon said. "But I didn't care. I told him what Penny had said about him. He didn't deny it. I told him I figured Penny had come to his shop to kill him and I was sorry she'd lost her nerve." Jon extracted a small whorled cowrie sh.e.l.l from a bowl on the coffee table and turned it over and over in his hand. "You know what he did? There he was, so sick, a tube in his nose, gray skin, he could hardly breathe-" Jon rubbed the sh.e.l.l as if it were a charm. "You know what he did? He smiled. Not a sweet smile, either. He said to me, 'Yes, but it was your kid she had.'"

Jon turned the sh.e.l.l over one last time and then placed it gently back in the bowl as if trying not to harm it. "I didn't want to believe him. But you know, the minute he said it, I knew it was true."

I closed my eyes.

According to Murray, Penny hadn't come to his shop to kill anyone except herself-not the innocent laborer, long ago fired in disgrace, or guilty Murray, still prospering from his business. Unaware of that at first, Murray was afraid. He didn't know Penny was pointing the gun at him only to make him sit down and listen.

"I came to tell you I righted your wrong," Penny told him. "You did me wrong and now I've made it right."

"Put the gun down," Murray cajoled. "Put the gun down and then we'll talk."

"You took advantage of an innocent child," Penny said as she aimed the pistol at his chest.

"Listen, I know what I did to you. I've felt bad about it all these years," Murray lied.

"You haven't felt bad," Penny told him. "It doesn't matter how you feel."

Murray held out his hand so that Penny could give him the pistol.

"You know, for years I didn't even know what happened or who did it," she said as she raised the sight to his head. "I blocked it out. People said it was the laborer, so I figured it was. Then last year I remembered. I remembered what happened with you, and I remembered what happened with a lot of guys." She aimed the pistol at the center of Murray's face. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have done anything I needed to forget."

"I just wish I could make it up to you." Murray made his voice as smooth and soothing as he could. "Maybe I can still make it up. I have money."

"You think I'm here for money?" Penny curved her lips into an icy smile.

"If not money, what? Let me help you, Penny."

"You know what I learned? I learned you have to help yourself. When somebody does you wrong, there's only one way you can live with it. You have to make it right."

"So you made it right, did you?" Murray was humoring her. He would have said anything.

"The Wishners aren't all bad," Penny told him. "Your wife Pauline, for example. When we lived in Riggs Park she was always nice to me. She acted like a lady. And Wish is okay. There's a good part to the Wishners. The good part is what I used to make things right."

With typical Penny-style logic, she outlined for Murray how she'd known that in order to survive she would have to create something more precious and good than his act of violation had been evil. She would have to create a new life. A child. She would not come back to Murray for that; he was too vile. But it was important that the positive thing come from Murray's own flesh. She would use the unspoiled part of him that he had left behind. Jon. She had gone to Jon at just the right moment. She had always known when she was fertile, she said. That's why she'd been so careful about contraceptives for so many years. She'd always known it would be easy to have a child when she wanted one. It had happened just as she'd planned. Penny even told Murray her daughter's name: Vera.

She thought the birth of the child would mean a new beginning for her, she continued, trancelike now but still pointing the gun. Giving up Vera for adoption had been hard. Penny had managed because she knew her mind was too tangled to make her a good mother. She had put Vera in a good home. The evil that Murray had put into motion had been appeased. Penny would never again need to say yes to every man who wanted to touch her. She would never again need to forget, immediately afterward, what she had done with those men. Her confusion would go away.

"But it wasn't like that," Penny told him. "It was like, now you've done what you were here for, sister. That's all there is."

Murray made what he thought were calming clucking sounds. "It's certainly 'all there is' if you do something you'll be sorry for," he crooned. "You're only-what? Twenty-three?"

"Twenty-three can be a lifetime," Penny had replied.

Hearing this, knowing what was coming, I caught my breath. I hadn't eaten all day, but the hollow in my stomach felt like it belonged to someone else. "So that accounts for the note," I said. "'I'm falling through the hole/in the bottom of my soul-'"

"'And there ain't n.o.body to catch me,'" Jon finished. He took a long, slow, thoughtful breath. "You know what else? I think she figured splattering herself all over my father's shop would reflect badly on his business."

"Jesus Christ," I said. That was precisely how Penny would have seen it: that leaving a mess in Murray's office would condemn him.

When Penny stuck the pistol in her mouth, Murray claimed he tried to stop her, with talk at first and then, seeing talk was fruitless, approaching her and holding out his hand. Jon didn't believe him. Murray was a strong man, and Penny was a small woman with the power to ruin him.

Everyone knew the rest. Penny sat down in a chair in the middle of Murray Wishner's office and pulled the trigger.

With the evidence of Penny's suicide note in her pocket, Murray was never suspected.

Jon sank back in his seat, his olive complexion sallow as wax.

"My G.o.d," I whispered.

"You think you aren't going to live through things," he said. "And then you do. All those years pa.s.sed. By the time I saw you on TV in the hurricane, Penny was dead such a long time, it was such ancient history-You forget you're ever going to have to deal with it again. You think you won't. I know I should have told you."

"But you didn't."

"I'd just spent a couple of years trying to find Vera. All I found out was that in adoption cases the search can only be instigated by the child. If the child wants to find the parent, okay. But not the other way around. I went to Penny's sisters. If they knew anything, they weren't saying. Actually, I think hearing about a baby shocked them. I'm not sure they believed it. Going to Essie Berman never occurred to me. I was running into nothing but blank walls. Finally I just wanted it to be over."

"So you came to North Carolina and started this-Started us. And still didn't feel like you had to tell me."

"I was happy," Jon said quietly. "I didn't want to spoil it. After a while, I stopped thinking about Vera. Everything was better than it had been for a long time. Except the times when..."

"What?"

"When Robin came to visit."

"Robin!"

"She's just a few years younger than Vera. Every time I saw you with Robin, it brought it all back. I guess, in my mind, Robin and Vera were the same."

I was momentarily dumbfounded.

"So that's why you were so solicitous to Robin?"

"I hadn't thought about it. I guess so."

"I was beginning to think you had designs on her."

"On Robin?"

"Well-"

"The only one I have designs on," Jon said softly, "is you." He leaned across the coffee table toward me, but I froze, unable either to shrink back or to move forward toward him. Now the mysteries were stripped away. Now everything was clear. How like Penny to a.s.sume the sins of the father could be erased by the infidelity of the son. How like Penny never to imagine a quickie with Jon on the sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake Bay could ruin our friends.h.i.+p, any more than the sorority had back in high school. Friends.h.i.+p was precious, inviolate; s.e.x was fleeting and cheap.

Jon, on the other hand-Jon could have said no.

For a long time I didn't move. Jon got up, went to the kitchen, came back with a gla.s.s of water and one of my pain pills, which I took. I wasn't grateful. I was cold. I s.h.i.+vered. Finally, I made myself get up, walk to the sliding gla.s.s door. The rain had stopped, but the air felt damp and raw. I shut the slider against the steady, rhythmic breathing of the sea. I closed the curtains and sat back down.

Jon got up, paced. "Listen to me," he said. "I love you. I loved you when I was fifteen and I loved you when I was forty-five and I love you now." He sat next to me, grabbed my arm, held it immobile. "I've made some horrible mistakes. I've run away from them. When I came to North Carolina, I was going to make up for everything and didn't. I handled everything badly. But I love you. I was hoping to spend the rest of my life here with you, whatever's left of it. I still am." Aware that he was squeezing, he dropped my arm. The indent of his fingers remained on my flesh. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His eyes were black as olives, lambent and sober. He hung his head in a posture of capitulation. "It's your call, Barbara. What do you want?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. Some time to think, maybe."

"Then as soon as you're better, tomorrow or the next day, I'll go."

"Go where?" My voice felt far apart from me. Nothing felt real.

"A motel, I guess."

"This is your house. Your office." I rubbed my hands together, trying to bring feeling into them.

"It doesn't matter. I'll be okay. Take as much time as you need."

And the next morning, after spending the night in his office, checking on me every hour, he was gone.

CHAPTER 18.

Limbo The next month was among the strangest I ever spent in my life. That first night, I huddled under every cover I could find, trying to stop chills that shook me like a carnival ride. Having asked Jon for time to think and being rewarded with his going, I no longer felt righteous. I felt abandoned. I tossed and s.h.i.+vered. Toward dawn I fell into a deep, heavy, dreamless sleep from which the phone jolted me a few hours later, with Steve and Marilyn talking at the same time on two extensions, telling me that Steve had told Marilyn everything.

"Oh, Barbara, I'm so sorry," Marilyn gushed. "Lucky for you I'm a woman with great largeness of heart, phoning even after you ran off without telling me about the baby. And Jon! What a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I had no idea."

I sat up in the bed, feeling every bone and muscle groan. "I'm a woman with great largeness of heart myself," I said, "coming to D.C. even after you kept your cancer secret for a week."

"So how are you, sweetie?" Steve interrupted. "I tried to get hold of you yesterday, but no answer. Did you have your talk with Jon?"

I told them about the accident, and how Jon had come to get me. I told them what Murray had done to Penny, and her trip to Camp Chesapeake. I told them Jon had moved out so I could think. It was a good thing both of them were on the line at the same time, because I couldn't have related the story twice. I insisted I was fine.

"Fine," Marilyn growled. "Oh, Barbara."

"Well, if it's not true now, it will be," Steve a.s.serted with such confidence that I believed him. "If you need anything, give Uncle Stevie a holler. Or call Marilyn. Anytime, even three in the morning. Promise us, sweetie. Now I'm going to let the two of you talk."

"I'm coming down to be with you," Marilyn said as soon as he hung up.

"That's ridiculous. The best thing you can do for me is get better."

"I wish you'd told me about Jon and Penny before you left," she said.

"Too upset. Besides, you sounded like you really hoped Steve and Penny had a baby together. Aside from everything else, I thought you'd be disappointed."

"Disappointed!"

"I thought you wanted a niece. So you could find her and be nice to her. Make it up to Penny, somehow, for not always treating her very well."

"Make it up!" She paused long enough to reconsider this. "Well, if I did, this cured me. Anything we did to hurt Penny, she certainly went us one better. Now, none of us needs to feel guilty about Penny anymore. Not you, not me, not Steve. It's a big relief for all of us." Then she caught herself. "I don't mean it's a relief that you got hurt in the process, Barbara. Never that."

"I know."

"Let me help you. What do you want to do, Barbara?"

"Right now? Just lick my wounds a little."

"At least promise you'll call every day. Promise you'll check in."

"Of course," I told her. As if I, not she, were the ailing patient.

During the short time I'd been gone, the season had moved decisively from summer to fall. A run of warm, dry days and cool, clear nights replaced the sulky heat. Temperatures dropped to the seventies, the ocean grew jewel-toned, the sand golden in the angled light. Seized by an unexpected inertia and ambivalence, I wandered mechanically through the fine bright days, toying with a small research project, cleaning my computer, staring at the indigo sea. I thought very little about Jon. I thought very little about anything.

I didn't come out of my daze until the fourth morning, when Jon showed up at the door.

"I know I said I wouldn't bother you," he said, looking sheepish, "but I need some clothes." He was wearing the same s.h.i.+rt he'd had on when he left. As I opened the door, I was aware of his physical beauty as I hadn't been since our first months together, if the term beauty could be applied to a man approaching sixty.

He disappeared down the hall and returned with a pile of clothes and a stack of files from his office. "This should do it for a while."

"I've kicked you out of your own office," I said.