Riggs Park Part 10

"So. Barbara Cohen." The voice was raspy instead of booming, but had lost none of its bite. In a wing chair by the window, always her favorite spot, sat an ancient but unmistakable Essie. "I'd get up, but I'm not so st.u.r.dy anymore. Come here."

In her younger days Essie's sharp features had made her grotesque enough, but in old age, whatever cushioning had softened her face had fallen away so thoroughly that her beaky nose and jutting cheekbones seemed about to break through the skin. Always thin, she was almost skeletal now, and her once-sallow complexion had grown pale and powdery.

Though I'd expected no better, Essie's appearance was a shock. Measured against the long swath of eternity, the thirty-odd years since we'd seen each other seemed too short a span to have made such a mockery of her: robbed her of flesh, creased her face, bent her spine. I took the old woman's hand, so papery and crushable, that I was afraid to grip it. But Essie squeezed amazingly hard for a woman of ninety-a clear, "I might be old but I'm not finished yet" squeeze, so deliberate that I wanted to laugh.

Then, holding the frail hand with the firm grasp, I realized how shriveled and small Essie had become. My earliest memories were of a giantess, huge and loud, a force to be reckoned with no less than thunder or lightning. Now, even in a sitting position, she seemed several inches shorter, hunched, dwarfed by the high back of the wing chair. More distressing yet, her head seemed smaller despite the prominent nose, which puzzled me until I realized what was missing was Essie's voluminous hair, once a salt-and-pepper pandemonium, now white and spa.r.s.e, sadly diminished.

"Sit down. Please." Taneka pulled up an extra chair. "I'll get the coffee."

Essie waited for the girl to disappear. "So, what brings you here? Don't tell me nostalgia."

"Not nostalgia. I came to ask you something." There had never been any point lying to Essie.

"Ah. A mission." Essie nodded, leaned back. "Why am I not surprised?"

I reached over, took her hand again. "Are you going to send me on a guilt trip, Essie? For not coming to see you? I don't even live around here anymore. It's a seven-hour drive."

Essie didn't ask where I lived or if I visited D.C. regularly or why I hadn't come to see her before. "Fine, you can tell me about your mission. But first catch me up. My old friends from the neighborhood are either dead or we don't keep up. Mostly dead. Tell me who you still keep in touch with."

"Marilyn and Bernie, mainly. And of course Trudi." Grateful for the distraction, I filled Essie in on my sister's history and a little of my own, and told her about Bernie and Marilyn in a cursory way. Bernie was fine; Marilyn had had a bout of cancer.

"Had one myself," Essie said. "The disease is overrated, if you ask me."

I didn't go into detail. I didn't mention the face-lift. "And Steve is fine. You probably read about him in the papers."

"I do." Essie's smile threw her face into a spider's web of wrinkles. "Steve. Mr. Bigshot."

I leaned closer. "Actually, I'm here because of something Steve told Marilyn. Something she wants to find out about."

"Oh?"

"You told him Penny had a baby?"

Essie's smile vanished. "On the condition he leave it be."

"That was a long time ago," I said.

Essie turned to the window, studied the rain. Long seconds ticked by. I'd forgotten Essie's habit of never responding until she was good and ready, and how infuriating that could be. "What would be the harm?" I pressed.

Essie snorted. She'd always played this game with me. When I was young, she'd let me hang around her house, but made me wait endlessly if I asked a question, sometimes pretending not to hear. She was far more responsive to Steve and Penny-finding them more needy, I supposed-but if her offhand manner meant she found me more self-sufficient than they were, still it annoyed me no end.

Essie didn't offer any more help. She looked toward the doorway, where Taneka was shouldering her way back in through the bedroom that had once been the dining area. She carried a tray of coffee and cookies.

"Good. Caffeine," Essie said. "These days, believe me, I need it."

"At your age you shouldn't drink coffee at all," Taneka admonished. The affection in Taneka's voice rea.s.sured me. I began to like her better.

Taneka handed us steaming, clunky mugs. "If you're going to be here a while, how about I just run down to the store? It won't take long."

"Please. Of course."

With the haste of the young released into welcome freedom, Taneka grabbed her purse and let herself out. Essie took a big, unladylike swig of coffee, bit into a cookie. "You're wondering who's taking care of who, that's what you're wondering."

"What?"

"Whether I'm supporting Taneka or she's supporting me."

"No, Essie, I-"

Essie waved her cookie in my direction to stop me. "She goes to school part-time. She needed a place to live. Her mother ran off years ago, and it doesn't hurt her to have an older woman to live with. Marcellus pays her tuition. You think I'd let him off without paying her tuition? His own child?" She gave a shiver of disgust. "I give her room and board. She helps me out. A smart girl. It's a good arrangement."

"She said she thought I was the police."

"Drugs," Essie said. "Not her, but plenty of others. The neighborhood isn't what it used to be." She put down her mug. Although fragile, Essie's hands didn't shake. "She takes care of me," she said. "White people never did."

Deliberately ignoring that, I rushed to change the subject. "What about her little boy?"

"What?" Essie's eyes narrowed, and I realized too late I couldn't pursue the subject of Taneka's child without admitting I'd been there on Sunday.

"Nothing. I was-"

Essie had taken me to mean something else. As glazed and yellowed as her eyes were, the glance she leveled at me was piercing. "So. You thought it was a boy."

"What?" I was lost.

"It wasn't a boy," Essie said. "It was a girl."

"Who was?"

"Penny's baby. That's what Marilyn wanted to know, isn't it? If it was a boy or a girl. The whole story. Right?"

"Right." I felt as if someone had cut off my air.

"Penny stayed with me while she was pregnant. From the time she started showing." Essie's voice was sharp.

"Here?"

"Where else?" Essie lifted the mug again, slurped some coffee, wiped her lips with a hand. Her manners hadn't become more delicate with age. "The neighborhood was completely colored except for me and one or two others. Who was going to see her? I arranged the adoption, too."

"With an agency?"

"A private adoption. Penny wanted to know who the baby would go to. Also, there was money in it. She wanted money for afterward."

"Then-once it was done. Was Penny all right?"

Essie waved a hand as if to shoo away her disgust. "Was she all right? Of course not. Penny was never all right."

"That's not what I meant. I-"

"The adoptive parents were fine. Nice people. The baby grew up and turned out fine, too."

"So you kept in touch with her?"

She reached for another cookie, bit into it, spoke with her mouth full. "What does Marilyn want to know this for?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe because she never had a daughter and would like a niece. Maybe because she's sick and wants to tie up loose ends."

"So you got railroaded, huh?" She stared at me while she finished off the cookie. "You don't even know what you got dragged into, do you? If Marilyn wanted to find out so bad, why isn't she the one asking?"

"She had some surgery yesterday. I told you, she has cancer."

"She had cancer surgery?"

"No. Just some minor-" I couldn't say it. Helpless, I went on to something else. "So it was a little girl."

"A girl. Yes. Penny named her Vera. You know what that means? It means truth." Essie slid yet another cookie off the tray, demolished it in a single bite. There was certainly nothing wrong with her teeth.

"If Steve knew he had a daughter, he could have helped. He could have-"

"Who said she was Steve's?"

"Well, was she?"

Essie shrugged.

"The man in the bus station," I said. "She could have been his." The man in the bus station reportedly looked like Steve. I didn't know what, if anything, they did to prove paternity in the days before DNA testing. Essie said nothing.

"So it was a private adoption." Slowly, I tried to feel my way through the thoughts racing through my head. In those days, adoption papers were sealed. Could a potential father, or a potential aunt, get hold of them? "Who drew up the agreement?" I asked. "Did you have a lawyer?"

"Bring Marilyn with you and we'll talk about it," Essie said.

"But she can't-"

"Never mind, she can't. You waited all these years, you can wait until she's up and around." Essie gulped the last of her coffee and put down her cup, as if to close the subject. "So. Besides Marilyn and Bernie, tell me who else you keep up with. Linda Schecter?"

"I haven't seen her in years. Seriously, Essie, about the baby-"

"Not a baby anymore. Not for a long time." She crossed her arms in front of her, a shield. "What about Wish?" she demanded. "You always liked Wish."

I crossed my own arms, locking her out. How like Essie to veer the conversation exactly where she wanted it to go. "He doesn't call himself Wish anymore," I said. "He hasn't been called Wish for years."

"No? Why not?"

"I guess he outgrew it."

"So what does he call himself now? Mister Wishner?"

"Just Jon, Essie."

"And where is he? I used to read his columns. A writer...I guess he could live anywhere."

"He's with me, Essie," I whispered. "In North Carolina. We've been together the last couple of years."

CHAPTER 11.

Snow I held my breath as I waited for Essie to respond. The fact of my live-in relationship with Jon seemed a momentous revelation, but for all the reaction I got, I might have confessed to the air. Essie's hands lay limp in her lap. She seemed blanketed by a great stillness. "So. You got together after all."

"Yes."

She turned toward the window, features masked by the unyielding fatigue of old age, eyes almost closed. "That big snow," she said. "Sweet sixteen and never been kissed."

"Kissed once or twice, maybe." I smiled, remembering.

"You gained a boyfriend and Penny lost a tooth."

It seemed an odd thing to say, though true enough. "Penny got a bridge," I reminded her. "Her teeth looked okay. You couldn't tell."

Essie's head bobbed, nodded onto her chest. Her white scalp glowed dully beneath the wispy hair. I leaned over and touched her wrist. "Essie?"

She was sound asleep. She was still snoring when Taneka returned ten minutes later, her halo of braided hair frosted with tiny drops of rain.

"She ate a cookie, didn't she?" She put down a small grocery bag and studied Essie.

"More like three or four."

Taneka glared as if it were all my fault. "She's a little bit diabetic. Anything with sugar, it puts her right out."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"She'll sleep it off. It happens any time I don't watch her."

"You should have told me."

"She would have been embarra.s.sed. Would have made my life miserable for weeks." Leaning over, Taneka eased Essie up from her chair and half walked, half carried her into the dining-room-turned-bedroom. Through the open door, I watched as she tenderly helped Essie onto the bed, slipped off her shoes, pulled up the cover. But when she returned to the living room, all traces of the tenderness she had lavished on the old woman were gone.

"You better go now," she told me sharply. "She'll still be fuzzy when she wakes up. That's from the sugar, too. You can come another time."

"We were in the middle of a conversation when she fell asleep," I said. "She was just telling me-"

"Another time." Taneka motioned me to get up.

What the h.e.l.l, I thought. As long as she was throwing good manners out the door with me, I might as well say what was on my mind. "What about the little boy?" I demanded. "The little boy who was with you on Sunday. Is he yours?"