May We Be Forgiven Part 12

"Five hundred minimum."

"Fine, and how much time with the rabbi for five hundred?"

"Twenty minutes."

"You are a good Jew," I say. "Good businessman."

"Woman," she says.

I read her the number of my credit card, she puts me on hold for a minute. I hear ancient music, the sounds of the Jews crossing the desert.

"Card decline."

"Why?"

"They don't say. You call credit card and then call me back. Bye-bye, shlepper."

Did she really say "shlepper"?

Pulling out of the temple parking lot, I am nearly broadsided by a delivery truck.

Back at the house, there's another note resting on the floor under the mail slot.

"I have job to do on you. You need to be home."

"Tessie, who leaves these notes? Do you see them come, or does some anonymous hand feed them through the slot? What does the hand look like, what does it want from me?"

Tessie looks at me, as if to say, "Look, buddy, I know you're trying hard, but I hardly know you, and there's been so much weird s.h.i.t lately, I don't even know how to begin to explain."

Something is different: nothing major, but just that odd sense that things have been moved, like when I left was the newspaper outside or inside? And the pile of mail I'd been keeping by the front door doesn't look the same. There's a can of cream soda on the counter. I touch it-the can is cold.

My heart kicks into a higher gear.

I look at Tessie. Her tail thumps.

"h.e.l.lo?" I call out. "Anybody home?" Too weird. "Hel-lo..."

A noise from upstairs.

"Who's there-Nathaniel, Ashley? Identify yourself."

My heart is slamming around in my chest like it's broken loose. Cupping my hands together, I deepen my voice. "This is Sergeant Spiro Agnew from the police department. We know you are in the house. Come out with your hands over your head."

There's a big thud, like something falling. "s.h.i.t," someone says.

"All right, then, I'm coming up. I'm drawing my gun, I don't like having to pull out this enormously heavy, powerful weapon. Wallace, step back...."

I slam my foot down on the bottom of the stairs four times-as if to imitate the sound of feet climbing. Tessie looks at me like I'm nuts. "This is your last warning. Wallace, call the station and have them send the SWAT truck." Tessie looks at me sideways, as if to say, "Who the h.e.l.l is Wallace?" I take Nate's baseball bat from the umbrella stand and head up the stairs.

"Don't shoot," a woman's voice says.

"Where are you?"

"In the bedroom."

I walk in with the bat up, ready to swing. Susan is there, arms filled with Jane's clothing, clothing on hangers piled high. "You're not going to kill me, are you?"

"I didn't realize you had a key."

"I used the one under the fake rock."

I look at the clothing in her arms. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I wanted some of Jane's things. Is that weird?"

I shrug.

"Can I take them?"

"Take whatever you want. Take a TV-there's one in every room. You want some silver, there's a lot downstairs, in little velvet pouches."

"Should I look at it?"

"Your call. She was your sister; at this point you're stealing from your niece and nephew." I stand aside so she can go down the stairs.

"Where's your gun?"

"What gun?"

"You said you had a big powerful gun; all I see is Nate's bat."

"I lied." I put the bat down and help Susan carry things to the car. "She sure had a lot of shoes," I say.

"She had good feet," Susan says. "Easy to fit."

"Good feet and a mink coat," I say.

"Where do you think the coat is?" Susan asks.

"Did you look in the front hall closet?"

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d killed my sister, I should at least get the coat." Susan goes back into the house, opens the front hall closet, and rummages. Susan finds the coat, puts it on, and walks towards the door, pausing to look at me, as if to ask, "Are you going to stop me?"

"Like I said, whatever you want, it's yours." I hand her the can of soda. "This yours too?"

"You can have it," she says.

I take a sip. "Do you know anything about the mail? Someone keeps leaving me weird notes mixed in with the mail."

"Like what?"

I show her one of the notes.

"You're screwed," she says.

"How so?"

"It's probably the family of the people George killed, looking for revenge."

"Should I show it to the police?"

"I'm not the one to advise you," she says, getting into her car. She backs out.

I go to the hardware store to look at burglar alarms and to buy night-lights and timers for the upstairs lights. Between Susan coming in with no warning, the notes being dropped through the mail slot, and the fact that for the last twenty-two years I've lived in a one-bedroom apartment eighteen floors above ground, the stress of being alone in the house is getting to me.

There's a woman in the battery aisle with something hidden in a pillowcase that she's desperately trying to work with. I don't mean to stare, but I do. I watch, mesmerized, as she keeps dipping her hands into the pillowcase and trying to do something.

"So what's in the bag? Bunny need a battery?"

She looks at me. "Is it that obvious?"

I shrug. "No."

She hands me the pillowcase, and I peek inside. It's an enormous pink d.i.l.d.o with a nut sack filled with ball bearings and oddly long rabbit ears.

"It just ground to a halt," she says. "Go ahead, push the b.u.t.ton."

I do, and it spins a half-circle and sounds like a car that won't turn over, like a starter not kicking in. "Maybe it got burned out," I say.

"Ha-ha," she says.

"Seriously, the problem may be more than the battery," I say. I take the pillowcase from her, and discreetly working inside the bag, I get the battery compartment open, slide four cells in, and-voila-the bunny is good to go. I turn it on and from the outside watch it spinning and dancing. "She's a real dis...o...b..nny," I say, handing the pillowcase back to the woman.

"It bends too," the woman says. "You can change the angle and also the vibration."

"Great," I say. Inside the pillowcase the bunny is still dancing; from all the writhing and flip-flopping, it almost looks like there's a snake in there.

"FYI, this never happened," she says. "Like, if I ever see you again, I don't know you."

"Likewise," I say, leaving her in the battery aisle and going to the home-intrusion section. I find a do-it-yourself alarm system that can be "trained." I buy one, even though I'm not quite sure what that means. It turns out by "trained" they mean "programmed to speak." You can elect for your unit to say, "BURGLAR, BURGLAR" or "TRESPa.s.sER, LEAVE NOW" in a loud voice, or produce a loud piercing alarm, or record a message of your own, like a whiny voice saying, "Honey, I got the restraining order for a reason...."

I put my bag in the car and go to the Chinese restaurant. They are starting to know me.

"You want same, you want different?" they ask.

"Same," I say.

"You a lonely man," the waiter says, bringing me my cup of soup.

Back at George's, I feed and walk the dog, and then I plug in the timers, setting the lamps in Nate's and Ashley's rooms to turn on at half past six in the evening and off at ten o'clock. The rooms are neat, empty, like rooms from a catalogue rather than rooms that are lived in. I think of children's rooms as overstuffed monuments to experience, collections that define their lives so far: a rock from a beach, a pennant from a game, a souvenir hat from a family trip. Here it's all been edited down to what fits neatly on a shelf. Everything is fixed, as though life has been suspended or otherwise delayed. The stillness leaves me depressed. I think of Nixon and his note keeping, Nixon and his endless legal pads, his tapes, his extensive and alas incriminating library of recordings. I think of Richard M. Nixon, named after Richard the Lionheart, son of King Henry II, brave soldier and lyricist, and realize that I don't know enough about Nixon and his relationship to stuff. I make a mental note to revisit the subject.

I go back downstairs and phone the children at school. "Is this an okay time to talk?" I ask Nate.

"Yeah," Nate says.

"I'm not interrupting study hall or football practice?"

"It's okay," Nate says.

"Ummm," I say. "So I just wanted to say hi and see how you're doing."

"Okay," he says.

"You're doing okay-that's great," I say.

"I'm not doing anything," he says, and then there is a pause. "Except that she doesn't call, except that it's all too quiet, I keep forgetting that Mom is dead, and I kind of like it that way. It's better when I forget; better with her not dead. When I remember I feel sick."

"I can imagine," I say, and then pause. "When did your parents usually call? Was there a set schedule, once or twice a week?"

"Mom called every night before dinner, between five-forty-five and five-fifty-five. I don't remember Dad calling."

"It must be very strange," I say, and pause again. "Tessie is getting along well. I take her for walks-I kind of get the sense no one ever did, she doesn't like to leave the yard, but once I get her past the end of the driveway she's okay."

"There's an invisible fence," Nate says.

"Must be-she's very well trained. Only goes out of the yard if I pull on her. Like I have to fight her to leave."

"That's because the fence gives her a shock."

"What fence?"

"The invisible f.u.c.king fence," Nate says.

"An invisible fence is a real thing?"

Nate sighs, painfully. "There's a small box on the dog's collar, that's the transmitter; if you take her out of the yard, take that off; otherwise she gets a shock. Even if you go out in the car with her, you have to take the box off."

I look at the dog's collar; the box is there, totally obvious.

Nate continues, "There's a bigger box mounted on the wall in the laundry room, next to the burglar alarm, that controls the invisible fence-the instructions for everything are in the drawer under the microwave."

"It's amazing that you know all that."

"I'm not r.e.t.a.r.ded, I've lived in that house my whole life."

"There's a burglar alarm? I just bought a home security system."

"We hardly use it, because once it went off and scared everyone too much."