“I mean maybe you fed me a line to see if we were handling a divorce.”

  “My source exists,” she snapped. “You know, you must really hate news people.”

  “I prefer ‘dislike,’ or maybe ‘distrust.’ Whatever made you pick this business?”

  “Whatever makes you care?”

  “I was cleverly searching for a change of subject.”

  She stabbed her half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray. “Basically because I’d divorced my husband and needed work, if that’s any of your business.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “Charles was a heart surgeon I married in Boston when he was still a resident and liked playing his guitar. Then he got a position at the Med Center here and stopped liking anything but cutting chests. Eventually I got tired of begging for attention and asked him to move out. For a while I felt depressed and worthless and jogged five miles a day to keep it together. Finally one of my apartment neighbors who’s a cameraman suggested I try news—after all, I was presentable and maybe even bright. By then I was sick of jogging and missing Boston. So I went to the station and asked for a job.”

  A thin, silent waitress in shocking blue tennis shoes interrupted with iced tea and a small blackboard with the fare scribbled in chalk. We stopped to order. It was hot even in the shade and our salt was stuck in its shaker. I asked for another one, and the waitress left, undelighted with me and her job.

  “So what happened next?” I asked Culhane.

  “The news director tried to screw me.” Her voice held a note of warning. “He didn’t, and I began to enjoy the work. It licenses my curiosity—asking questions, meeting people. I even like the hurry. The downside is hassling for airtime and never finishing a story; a thirty-second spot is for shit, you tell nothing. So when you get a story you can stay with, like this, you jump on it.”

  “One man’s tragedy—”

  “Is my opportunity. Look, I didn’t kill Lydia Cantwell, I’m just covering the story.”

  Her role as tough newslady interested me. I was getting an impression of where she stood: a late-blooming new woman, throwing out the makeup with her husband, paying the bills and liking it, but still not quite sure where she fit. “How long have you done this?”

  “News?” She sipped some tea, her gaze growing distant. “Around two years, I guess.”

  I guessed she’d counted back to the divorce and been pulled into the vortex of memory, wondering how it had all happened and who she’d been before. I quoted a line of poetry. “‘I see my life go drifting like a river from change to change …’”

  She looked up as if troubled. “You’re good at divining mood,” she said. “Who wrote that?”

  “Yeats.”

  She smiled fractionally. “You’re quite Irish yourself. Except that ‘Adam’ sounds very Old Testament.”

  “My father’s idea. My middle name is Francis.”

  “Your father had a point. Have you ever been there—Ireland?”

  “Once. It was green and beautiful and very poor, and it rained too much and was cold. It felt like I’d been there before.”

  Culhane nodded. “I felt that, too.”

  Our waitress brought two crab casseroles that smelled and tasted good. Culhane ate with small, thoughtful bites. As we were finishing she said, “The next thing is that Henry Cantwell’s strange.”

  “Is he now?”

  “Of course.” She sounded impatient. “I’ve talked to the people who should know him best. They start by saying he’s a fine gentleman, mention the family—down here they still like to know where you’re from and who ‘your people’ are. It gives them a handle on you. But they all end up saying they don’t know him very well and that he seems off somewhere, almost secretive.”

  “You do understand what that’s about?”

  She shook her head.

  “Mother of God, Nora, his wife’s just been murdered. They’re all preparing for Henry to have sinister secrets. At least try to distinguish between reticence and guilt.”

  She was plainly galled. “We’re talking about strangeness, not reticence. People at his bank will tell you the past couple of months he’d be listless, then become totally irrational. Two months ago he threatened to resign if they didn’t approve a loan for some shaky project in New Orleans that made no sense, got the bank in a mess, and then he retreated to his office and was hardly seen for days.”

  “I’ve heard all about that. Look, Henry’s big problem is being born with money and a bank when he should have been an English professor. I agree with anyone who says he’s out of place negotiating loans with some slab-handed wheeler-dealer whose life’s dream is to finance trips to Las Vegas and season tickets on the fifty through some real-estate scam. But that’s no crime, just a sad incongruity.”

  She sloshed the tea in her glass, as if examining it for something important. “What about affairs?”

  I was getting annoyed. “Henry’s never shown the slightest interest in any woman but Lydia, except perhaps the ones in books. You’re not dealing with Richard Burton, just a slightly dreamy middle-aged gentleman who likes to read. Nothing strange about him. If you want strangeness, try Rayfield.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because he’s got the look of a classic obsessive-compulsive personality. He began acting like Henry was one of his obsessions before he’d even met him.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he’s afraid Cantwell will do it again.”

  “That’s droll.”

  “I’m serious. There are a lot of scared people out there.”

  “And Rayfield’s helping to scare them.”

  The waitress came with key-lime pie. Culhane took a bite before saying, “Rayfield is sort of a Jesuit: no other interests, no family or friends outside the police and not many of those, no women anyone’s heard of. All he wants is to track down sin—you know, ‘man the hunter.’ He even told one of our people once that the relationship between him and a suspect is a personal thing, like he almost breathes with the guy. It’s a little obsessive, sure. But I don’t think he’s off about Cantwell. Put together what bits I know: in the last two months Henry begins acting irrational, Lydia shows an interest in divorce and is killed, and then Henry forgets to tell Rayfield about what obviously was a twelve-minute quarrel. You don’t have to be brilliant to guess that one of them was having an affair.”

  “Just irresponsible. Do yourself and Channel Seven a favor. Watch what you say.”

  She looked at me seriously. “We’ve got lawyers, too. I’m just telling you not to invest too much in this.” She took another bite. “Incidentally, what does your client say about his little lapse on the telephone call? I’ll be happy to report it.”

  “I haven’t asked him.”

  She shot me an incredulous glance. “I’m glad I don’t have your driving lack of curiosity.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought I’d wait until after the funeral. I’ve lived in the South for a while and developed some manners.”

  She reddened. “All right,” she said curtly, then checked her watch. “I’m late for work. Better eat your pie.”

  The check arrived as we finished. We split the bill and hurried silently to the car. She looked wryly across from the passenger seat, as if trying to ease the strain. “No Holy Mother on the dashboard?”

  “I’ve given all that up.”

  “Have you really?” she asked, more serious.

  “Haven’t you?”

  “Yes and no. I still remember things like my first confession: the priest chewed peppermint Lifesavers, I could smell them through the screen. I was too terrified to laugh.”

  I started the car. “You got the whole dose, then.”

  “Lord, yes. Mother says the Rosary every day. I remember when a Russian family moved in behind us, poor people. One morning I caught Mother sprinkling holy water in their backyard. She was saving them from communism.”

  “Back then you couldn’t be too careful,” I smiled. “Even Ike had it. Anyhow, we all have our mothers.”

  “Do we not. Where is your family?”

  “Cleveland. My mother, anyhow. My father’s dead.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Works for the clerk of courts. Files things, mostly.”

  I turned from the parking lot toward downtown. Culhane’s hair rippled in the breeze. “So how did you get to Birmingham?” she was asking.

  “My wife’s from here.”

  “Is she the tall, dark-haired woman?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I saw her at the party. She’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “She is that.” We were near downtown. “Tell me where to drop you.”

  She pointed to a parking garage. I pulled over and stopped. “One thing,” I asked. “How’d you get past our receptionist?”

  “I said I was late for our appointment.” She got out and gave me a fleeting smile. “Thanks for the time.”

  “Sure.”

  She walked to her car. I drove off to take Kris Ann to the funeral.

  ELEVEN

  By the time we reached downtown the dance of bad memory was like tocsins in the brain. “I know you hate these,” Kris Ann said finally.

  I shrugged. “It’s just that Protestant funerals are such dismal affairs. There’s no catharsis, just one more dutiful rite of forebearance. No one will cry—not even Henry—and then we’ll all go home.”

  But then that was all I’d done when they’d buried my father.

  The Episcopal church was a large gothic structure, its stone walls blackened by time and weather and a thickening overcast. Inside it was dark and vast, with a high vaulted ceiling. Along both walls intricate stained-glass windows portrayed the life of Jesus in bright, jagged sections. A blood-red carpet declined between pews overflowing with mourners to a marble altar with an ornate silver cross. Toward the right front, my partners grouped in white shirts and gray suits, trying hard to look what they were. We joined them.

  Muffled sounds came from the rear of the church. Five relatives and Cade bore Lydia’s casket, covered by a white pall and resting on a low metal platform with wheels. A blonde acolyte with the processional cross and two clergy with prayer books preceded it. At the rear, Henry Cantwell stood with his sister.

  We all rose. The pallbearers began rolling the casket noiselessly toward the altar. A grim-faced Cade held one handle. I couldn’t find Jason. The clergy read in hollow voices:

  “‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live …

  I saw Rayfield standing by the rear door. The voices moved nearer:

  “‘I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God …’”

  Henry’s eyes fixed emptily on the acolyte’s cross. He passed Etta Parsons, face rigid as if fighting tears, then Dalton Mooring, head averted, his blonde wife next to him looking wretchedly hungover. The clergy continued:

  “‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away …’”

  —“Deserter,” my mother had shrieked until they pulled her from the coffin and dragged her upstairs.

  My father lay in the front hall. “A fine-looking man, Kieron Shaw,” they kept saying, and him dead and waxy and looking like someone else. Brian babbled the Rosary by the head of the coffin—

  The foot of Lydia’s casket was placed toward the altar. One of the clergy read over her: “‘For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost …’”

  —“In nomine Patri, et Filii et Spiritu Sancti …” The old priest chanted over my father amidst the smell of incense. Three candles had lined each side of the closed black coffin. My mother wore black, the priest black vestments. Brian, nine years old, watched him—

  I watched the clergyman now as he read: “‘Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.’”

  He looked shrunken in his vestments, his gaze through wire-rimmed glasses touched with uncertainty. I sensed his isolation: a middle-aged man repeating an inherited ritual in a reedy voice and doubting his own efficacy.

  —Brian wore the priest’s collar I could never quite believe. “Good God, man,” he said, “you send Mother money instead of visiting, can’t bear to see the old neighborhood or anyone in it, and live outside the Church, beholden to a man you despise. For all your beautiful Kris Ann and fine house you’ve at last no sense of who you are.”

  “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest,” I jibed.

  “Don’t spar with me, Adam. You can make a sadness of your own life, but our mother deserves better.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “For our uncle’s funeral. That’s quite a gesture.”

  “Dammit, Bri, since I was twelve all I got from her was ‘don’t be like your father, don’t look up to what he did’ and all the time knowing she hated him for being killed. Hell, she’d say I looked like him and it was like a curse. So I did as she wanted, and if that’s taken me other places, so be it.”

  Brian raised a finger to his lips, glancing toward the stairwell. Upstairs my mother had said the Rosary and slept alone, as she had for the twenty years since my father was shot and killed and buried in a spring drizzle like the one that spattered the windows, reminding me of the smell of wet earth. Instead, drinking wine with Brian in the living room, I smelled the same trapped mustiness. A small lamp lit the familiar things of my mother: a Belleek china cup, lace on the couch, the tortured Jesus, the cameo of my father, wolf-faced, with cold blue eyes. I sat in his chair. Brian faced me, a brown-haired replica of the pale sleeping woman. “I know you paid the price for Da’s dying,” he said.

  I shrugged. “At least it didn’t make me a celibate.”

  He nodded in wry acknowledgment. “No doubt I found comfort in the Church, if only the sense that someone was looking after me. Who’s to say that’s a bad thing?”

  “Well, what I remember is our dried-out priest mouthing all that cold business of God’s will, and me knowing all the time that we were losers in an arbitrary and very nasty lottery. I’ve not become so weak-minded as to cherish that.”

  Brian flushed. “It’s worse than weak-minded to hate your past and neglect your mother,” he came back. “You’ve been at war with God twenty years now, and it’s left you empty. You’re a cynical man, Adam, there’s no purpose to your life—”

  And no purpose in rehashing it, I thought now. It was just that I hated funerals.

  I found myself staring at Lydia’s casket, ashamed to wonder, yet wondering if my stricken friend in the first pew was a sad, bewildered cuckold with a wife he’d never understood, and shouldn’t now. Perhaps better to let it be, and hope that Cade was right, that no one else would come to harm and Henry would go free.

  “Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit you,” read the clergyman. A little late, I answered silently. “Amen,” he finished.

  We rose again. The pallbearers shuffled to the casket and inched it back up the aisle. Henry trailed, eyes bleak with cold comfort. They rolled the casket to the door of the church and were gone.

  Kris Ann took my hand. Mourners edged from their pews looking up or down like strangers in an elevator. We moved in the halting file of reticent bodies, out the door.

  Rayfield stood watching in the stone archway. I passed him without speaking. In the street below it was raining and almost dusk. There were newsmen on the other side. Nora Culhane was next to her cameraman, shooting footage for the evening news. Then I saw Etta Parsons.

  She stood with her back to me, staring from the top of the steps toward the sidewalk. Joanne Mooring waited there alone. Then a dark green Cadillac glided from the street to stop in front of her. As he pushed open the door Dalton Mooring’s face appeared. His wife got inside. Etta Parsons watched the car drive silently away.

  I left Kris Ann and walked behind her. “Mooring?” I said softly.

  The single stare she gave me was hard as sculpture. Then she turned and walked away, into the rain.

  TWELVE

  The next morning I called on Jason Cantwell.

  The night of the funeral I had found Kris Ann in our bedroom, loading a black revolver.

  “What’s that?” I blurted stupidly.

  She gazed at me across the bed, gripping the revolver. It was blunt and smooth and oiled. “Daddy gave it to me this morning, after you left. To protect myself.”

  “From what?”

  “Jason Cantwell.” She looked away. “I’m afraid of him.”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “Because of Lydia. Isn’t that enough?”

  She stood framed in the blackness of our window, shoulders curled as if cold. “I don’t like guns,” I said quietly. “Roland knows that. You know it, too.”

  Her face burned. “I just need one until this is over.”

  “Krissy, I want you to take it back.”

  “Please—”

  “I’m here, dammit. Isn’t that enough?”

  Her look across the bed was level and silent. Then she repeated simply, “I need it, Adam.”

  Her eyes held mine without wavering. Softly, I asked, “Do you know how to use that?”

  “I haven’t in years. But Henry taught me when I was younger, for target practice. His father was a crack pistol shot.” She paused, then added, “He taught Jason, too.”

  For a long time I stared at the gun. “Put the safety on,” I finally said, “and stick it in a drawer.”

  She silently placed the gun in the drawer of her nightstand and closed it. I lit a cigarette.

  “I’m sorry, Adam.”

  She turned out the lights and got in bed.

  There was nothing more said, or done.

  In the morning we sat in the sunroom as we usually did, with coffee and the paper. The headline read, CANTWELL FAMILY CENTER OF PROBE. We said little about that or anything else, and nothing about the gun. Riffling the back pages I found Kris Ann’s picture above the caption “Mrs. Kris Ann Shaw, Chairman of the Junior League Volunteers for Retarded Children.” In the picture she smiled as she had the day I’d watched her kneeling in a circle of the children she taught, seemingly oblivious to dirty hair or tantrums or runny noses as she helped them shape clay into whatever they imagined. At the circle’s edge a small girl with taffy hair and guileless clear eyes had hung back watching her, unnoticed in the clamor of children thrusting lumps of clay toward Kris Ann for the smile she gave. Then the girl had put down her clay and walked to Kris Ann, touching her hair. Kris Ann had looked up, and then her smile had faded and she pulled the girl close, her eyes shut.

 

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