Barbara D'Amato - [Cat Marsala 09] Page 11

  And that's why.

  * * *

  There was a square casserole in the oven with a red topping. I asked, "Lasagna?"

  My mother had not spoken to me when I came in, which wasn't surprising. However, now she went so far as to say, "Tuna casserole."

  "Why is it red?"

  "I put tomato soup on it for topping. It makes a change."

  That was for sure.

  "What you did to Barry is utterly unforgivable," my mother said.

  "Well, that's up to Barry. To forgive or not." Hoping to get a genuine discussion going, I said, "Don't you believe people should tell the truth?"

  My mother has always managed to duck real issues. She talks all the time, but she won't really talk. She speaks in clichés. The number of times I've tried to sit her down and just chat like two friends is legion. Nothing comes of it.

  Right now she was saying, "Family comes first."

  "First before honesty?" I asked.

  "Family always comes first."

  "My country right or wrong," I muttered. Unfortunately, the problem wasn't just a matter of honesty alone. Suppose Barry really had killed Plumly? Suppose some confederate of his killed Jennifer and followed us? If there was even one chance in ten that Barry had killed Plumly, I had no right to protect him by lying. But I couldn't say that to Mom. My waffling on Barry's guilt was surprising even to me. The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland could believe six impossible things before breakfast, but I thought I was more logical. Two contradictory things— Barry must have killed Plumly and Barry would never have killed Plumly— two mutually exclusive ideas, and I believed them both.

  At this point Roxanne swept into the kitchen from somewhere in the backyard. "Cat," she said. "Terribly disappointed."

  By which she meant "I'm terribly disappointed in you." Roxanne has started talking this way for reasons known only to her. I've asked Douglas, who is my brother and Roxanne's husband, and he just says, "What way?" Personally, my guess is that she thinks it's upper-class Brit, and I suppose we can be glad that she hasn't yet added the accent.

  Roxanne is a lady of leisure. Her one and only job was eighteen years ago, a short stretch as Customer Sales Representative for Pesky Telemarketers.

  "How's Dougie?" I asked.

  "Oh, Douglas is mad at you, too. Awfully shabby behavior."

  "Yes," I said. "Deciding against a person without hearing the facts is truly shabby."

  She stared at me blankly just as Douglas entered, my father in tow. They were carrying a discarded bathtub. My folks had remodeled their bathroom two years back and Mom never throws anything out.

  "That crooked contractor just wants me to let him take it so he can sell it," she had told my father. "I want you to carry the tub out to the shed." Unfortunately, the house had no garage.

  "And plant geraniums in it?" he said. But she scowled at him. Now she shrieked, "Don't bring that thing in here! It's dirty. We're going to eat in a minute!"

  Dougie said, "Dad says the Elfridges are having a cookout and they want to borrow it."

  "Bathing before barbecuing?" I asked.

  Dad said, "They want to put the stopper in and fill it brimful of beer and ice."

  "So why bring it in here?"

  "To clean it. I can't give it to them this way."

  "Why not clean it outdoors?"

  "What? And let it get all dirty again?"

  This was not the first time I suspected Dad of doing something odd solely to distract my mother, and I was sure of it when he winked at me. "We'll put it in the laundry room," he said to Douglas, who reluctantly held up his end and kept walking.

  Dad also thought Douglas could use a little loosening up.

  My father truly loves my mother. That's gotta be it. He's not a masochist. He believes that she can't help her negative attitude, and he may be quite right. He believes that, underneath, there is a lovable person. And he may be quite right.

  My father is supportive to her and to all of us. He's kind of a large elf, with a puckish sense of humor, which he's careful to keep under control most of the time, because my mother is very quick to believe she's being made fun of.

  And she may be quite right.

  The front door opened and Barry, Maud, and Jeremy walked in. Maud looked white, drawn, and very tired. She was carrying the baby, wrapped to its neck in a pink blanket with blue polka dots. The kind of blanket you get from a friend when you won't tell them whether it's going to be a boy or a girl. Actually, of course, it already is a boy or a girl, but you know what I mean. Jeremy was carrying the marmalade tomcat, wrapped to the neck in his Cubs jacket. Both baby and cat looked sweet.

  Now, if this isn't the way to deal with a child's worry that his mother is consumed with care of the new baby, I don't know what is. Barry saw me in the group and pointedly moved to the other side of the room.

  Everybody cooed over the gorgeous new little morsel of humanity. The baby's name was Cynthia. After about ten minutes of the best baby in the world and how's the little sweetie, and look how good she is (my mother said, "Of course she's good. She's sleeping."), my father changed subjects.

  "Now, tell the folks about your cat, Jeremy. He was a very good boy when we went to the doctor, wasn't he?"

  "He was very brave."

  Roxanne said, "Does he have a name, sweetie?"

  "I'm going to call him the Cowardly Lion."

  She said, "Kind of a long name."

  "I can call him Lion for short."

  "Or Cow," said Roxanne.

  My mother broke into this exchange, saying, "Maud, I wouldn't think you'd allow this."

  "Allow what, Mom Marsala?" Maud was always cheerful to my mother, which told me she found her heavy going.

  My mother said, "Cats can smother babies."

  "Don't worry, Mom," Maud said. "When Jeremy told me you'd suggested that to him, I decided to call our pediatrician, and he said that was nonse— Uh, he said it really wasn't true."

  "Oh." Mom was stymied. Briefly. "Well," she said, "I certainly hope your doctor knows what he's talking about. Who recommended him to you?"

  "He's the dean of the Northwestern University Medical School."

  Things didn't improve when dinner was served. Roxanne and I set the table and then I brought the casserole from the oven to the table. We all sat down, including Jeremy, but not including Lion the cat, who was closed up in the bathroom, with a bowl of milk. Oddly enough, he didn't complain. The baby also missed the meal, having blinked a few times and fallen back asleep in a little yellow carrying cot.

  Foodwise, neither the baby nor Lion the cat missed much. Mom had bought a tub of coleslaw from the local deli to go with the tuna casserole. She passed around a jar of instant coffee and permitted Roxanne— "I'll let you do it" —to carry in the teakettle and pour boiling water into everybody's cups.

  "I don't hold with all this fancy coffee talk," Mom said. "Big companies with lots of smart researchers have put millions of dollars into developing instant coffee."

  Barry said wryly, "And very highly advertised, too." He had thereby used one of her favorite phrases and robbed her of a comeback should anybody object to the flavor.

  Mom said, "The main thing is to use a very small amount of instant and stir it briskly. Don't make it too strong. Just the tip of a teaspoon is fine."

  Conversation lagged for fifteen minutes after that. Which was about the time it took for everybody to finish eating. I reflected on what Chief McCoo would say about Mom's coffee recipe. Probably nothing; he'd be speechless. Dessert was canned apricots, exactly two per person.

  "Can I take Lion out in the yard?" Jeremy asked.

  Dad said, "Sure."

  Jeremy's absence made it possible for everybody to start berating me again. Well, not Dad or Maud.

  Barry said, "I have to leave in half an hour. They want me to come back to the police station."

  "Why again?" Mom asked.

  "I don't know. For more questioning."

  "This is yo
ur fault, Catherine," she said.

  Barry said, "They cautioned me, you know. That means they think I'm a serious suspect."

  Maud said, "But they can't really think you killed that man! You're not that sort of person."

  Looking directly at me for the first time, Barry said, "Cat, you could tell the police you made a mistake."

  "That I didn't see what I saw?"

  "That you're not sure. That the lighting wasn't good." He noticed Dad studying him soberly. "It wasn't good. She can't possibly be as certain as she says she is."

  "What about Jennifer?" I asked.

  "Jennifer is— well, after all, Jennifer can't testify."

  Dad sat up straighter. "I don't like this line of talk," he said.

  Okay!

  "Well, it's not your life on the line," Barry shouted. I looked more closely at him— his nostrils were pinched and the skin below his eyes was tight— and realized what was making him so unpleasant. He was terrified.

  My mother said, "Hush!" Then to me she repeated, "This is all your fault, Catherine."

  "All I did was tell the truth. There has to be some explanation; I know Barry wouldn't kill anybody."

  "Well, maybe you ought to mind your own business!"

  "Mother, should people tell the truth or not?"

  "You shouldn't have talked about it."

  "Wait a minute here! I'm getting pretty damn sick of this. Who was shot at? Me!"

  Maud opened her eyes wide, with some sympathy, I thought. But Barry was still frowning at me.

  I said, "Who was protecting your child, Barry? Me!"

  Nobody said a word. "Who had a bullet practically rip out her arm? Me. Who grabbed Jeremy and took what was maybe the only safe way out? Who talked Jeremy into thinking of it as an adventure instead of a really, really dangerous race against death, which it was? Me. We could have been killed, but I convinced him we were having an exciting time. Have I heard one word of thanks? From you, Mom? No. From you, Barry? Nope. Okay, you're under stress, but Jeremy is the most important person to all of us, isn't he? One word of thanks? No! From you, Maud? No."

  Maud said, "I'm sorry, Cat. I have been thinking about what you went through. And I realize that Jeremy's safe because of you."

  "And let's not forget, that since Barry didn't kill Plumly, which I firmly believe, there was a real, live assassin following me and Jeremy. This was not my imagination. I hope I'm safe now— if I am— because I told the police everything I know. But I'm not going to be able to relax as long as there's a killer out there."

  My dad said, "You're right."

  I said, "Barry, you may be furious at me for telling the truth about what I saw. But it's time for you to say to me, 'Oh, thanks, Cat. We owe you. You helped out with my festival, and then you probably saved the life of my child. You put your body between him and a bullet.' And what I want to know is why do I have to ask for this? What is wrong with you people? Is there one human being here who would like to say 'Thanks, Cat'?"

  15

  NO HEART?

  I left the house.

  I felt so alone. My family hated me. McCoo was busy, and the cop in charge of the investigation— the investigation that could potentially free my brother from suspicion— was a haughty, rigid idiot. As if that weren't enough, I put my hand in my pocket and found the picture Jeremy had had me take at the festival— me as the Wicked Witch.

  McCoo would probably talk with me if I went to his office. And he'd probably be there even though it was Saturday. But there wasn't much point. He'd only have to check with Hightower to find out what had developed. And he'd owe it to Hightower and his own principles not to give too much information away to a relative of the leading suspect.

  I called Sam. Dr. Sam Davidian, my semi-significant other, is a trauma surgeon working in the ED at University Hospital. He'd probably be my significant other if our schedules let us get together for more than four hours or so in a given week.

  He was on duty. No surprise there.

  I said, "Sam, I have an ethical dilemma. Are you getting off work anytime today?"

  "Matter of fact, no. It's Saturday. Rush hour in the trauma unit. Head trauma. Motorcycle accidents. Drunk drivers. Domestic violence. Alcohol poisoning."

  "But you have other staff members."

  "Yes. But we're low on people tonight. We had a little unfortunate accident."

  "What happened?"

  "You know Freddy? The new senior resident? He'd been on the floor twenty consecutive hours, truly beat, takes a shower, wants to sleep in the cot room, but there's only three beds and they're all in use. So he pulls on a johnny and goes and lies down in an empty exam room, Number Twenty-one. One of the docs has a call to start an epidural on a patient in Room Twelve. He and a third-year go into Twenty-one and find Freddy dead to the world, swab him, try to start the epidural, but he fights them. They've already been told that the patient is combative, so they wrestle him down and get the epidural in and flowing. About this time the attending is looking for them. Why haven't they started the epidural on the patient in Twelve? He finds them. Everybody is horrified."

  "Especially Freddy, I would think. Sam, don't they always look at the wrist bracelet? He wouldn't have had one on."

  "Of course they're supposed to look at the wrist bracelet. Unfortunately, they'd been on the floor thirty-six hours and were exhausted. You know, in this irrational world airline pilots can only fly a certain maximum number of hours, because sleep deprivation is a brain-killer. Planes could crash. But somebody who has your life at the end of a syringe— oh no!"

  "But why didn't they recognize Freddy?"

  "He'd just transferred in from another shift. They'd never seen him before."

  "This sounds absolutely impossible!"

  "Right. Is. It also happened. When you've got layers of safeguards, every accident that gets by sounds impossible."

  "So they must be in hot water."

  "Boiling water. They're both on suspension. Freddy, by the way, is perfectly all right, but he's taking two days off to recover. And he deserves it. So I'm working two shifts. If I'm lucky, it won't be three."

  "But I need your advice."

  "Can I give this advice over the phone?"

  "It's too complicated."

  "Then I guess— gee, I'm really sorry, Cat, but is tomorrow okay?"

  "Is that like take two aspirin and call me in the morning?"

  * * *

  Blast!

  Nobody loved me. As we used to say in high school when we were feeling excessively sorry for ourselves, guess I'd better go eat worms.

  And then I realized there was one person on this earth I could go to who would care and who would be there.

  * * *

  Hal Briskman is the editor of Chicago Today. He is a constant buyer for my stories, which, of course, makes him a saint. Hal is not only a great editor, but often gets ideas that brew up into interesting long articles for the "think-piece" section. And he knows everything about Chicago politics.

  Like McCoo, Hal is always at work. Saturdays, Sundays, plus all night as far as I know. Hal's only drawback is his affection for antique slang. A good story, for example, is "spiffy." Unless it's an extra-great story, in which case it's "spiffarootie."

  I love him.

  * * *

  "Cat!" Hal said. "Light of my life."

  "I brought coffee." I had brought really good gourmet fresh-ground fresh-brewed extra-strong coffee, not my mother's.

  "So you want something."

  "Yes. You know everything and everybody."

  "Silver-tongued devil. Ask away."

  "I've been working on the Oz Festival, as you know. I should have the material for the article about the Oz-haters for you soon. You know, no matter how you look at it, it's very strange that people would particularly pick on the Oz books."

  When they were first published, the Oz books were immediately popular with children. They were also hailed as the first real American fairy tales. Earlier stories
for children had been either heavily moralistic fables or the grisly stories of the likes of the Brothers Grimm, with children taken to the woods by their parents and left to starve.

  But in the 1930s a librarian in New York City named Anne Carroll Moore had pulled the entire Oz series from the Children's Room of the New York Public Library. Since she was the doyenne of American librarians, librarians all over the United States followed her direction and pulled the books.