Chaos

CHAPTER 4

A BICYCLE BELL JINGLES CHEERILY on the sidewalk behind us, and we step out of the way as a young woman rides past.

She brakes in front of us as if she might be going to the same place we are, and I offer a commiserating smile when she dismounts, wearing sporty dark glasses, hot and red-faced. Unclipping the chin strap of her robin’s-egg-blue bike helmet, she takes it off, and I notice her pulled-back long brown hair, her blue shorts and beige tank top. Instantly I get a weird feeling.

I take in her blue paisley printed neckerchief, her off-white Converse sneakers and gray-and-white-striped bike socks as she stares at her phone, then at the Georgian brick Faculty Club as if expecting someone. She types with her thumbs, lifts her phone to her ear.

“Hey,” she says to whoever she’s calling. “I’m here,” and I realize the reason she’s familiar is I met her about a half hour ago.

She was at the Loeb Center when I was buying the theater tickets. I remember seeing her as I wandered into the lobby to use the ladies’ room. At most she’s in her early twenties, and she has a British accent, what strikes me as a slightly affected or theatrical one. I was aware of it when she was talking with other staff and several actors at the American Repertory Theater.

She was across the room taping index cards of recipes on walls already covered with hundreds of them. In this particular production of Waitress members of the audience are invited to share their own favorite treats and tasty family secrets, and before I left I wandered over to take a look. I love to cook, and my sister loves sweets. The least I could do is make something special for her while she’s here. I was jotting down a recipe for peanut butter pie when the young woman paused as she was taping up another card.

“I warn you. It’s lethal,” she said to me, and she had on a whimsical gold skull necklace that made me think of pirates.

“Excuse me?” I glanced around, not sure at first that she was talking to me.

“The peanut butter pie. But it’s better if you add chocolate, dribble it over the top. The real stuff. And don’t swap out the graham-cracker crust for anything you think might be better. Because it won’t be, I promise. And use real butter-as you can tell I’m not into low-fat anything.”

“You don’t need to be,” I replied because she’s wiry and strong.

This same young woman is in front of Benton and me on the sidewalk along Quincy Street, holding her iPhone in its ice-blue case, clamping it back into its black plastic holder, and she accidently fumbles her water bottle, sending it tumbling. It thuds to the sidewalk, rolling in our direction, and Benton bends down to pick it up.

“Sorry. Thanks very much.” She looks hot, her face flushed and dripping.

“You definitely don’t want to be without this today.” He returns the bottle to her, and she secures it in its holder as I notice a young man trotting through the grass of the Faculty Club.

Her rimless sunglasses are directed at him as she remounts the bike, steadying herself, the toes of her sneakers touching the sidewalk. He’s dark and thin, in slacks and a button-up shirt as if he works in an office. Then he’s in front of her, hot and grinning, handing her a FedEx envelope that’s labeled but not sealed.

“Thanks,” he says. “Just put the tickets in and it’s ready to go.”

“I’ll drop it off on my way home. See you later.” She kisses him on the lips.

Then he trots away, back toward the Faculty Club, where I gather he must work. She puts on her helmet, not bothering with the strap that’s supposed to be snug under her chin. Turning to me, she flashes a smile.

“You’re the peanut-butter-pie lady,” she says.

“What a nice way to be characterized. Hello again.” I smile back at her, and I almost remind her to lock her chin strap.

But I don’t know her. I don’t want to be overbearing, especially after being accused of yelling at Bryce and disturbing the peace.

“Please be careful out here,” I say instead. “The heat index is hazardous.”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” She grips the flat riser handlebars, pushing down the pedals with long strong strokes.

“Not always,” Benton says.

I feel the hot air stir sluggishly as she rides past.

“Enjoy the pie and the play!” she tosses back at us, and she reminds me of my niece, sharp-featured, bold and extremely fit.

I watch her bare legs pumping, her calf muscles bunching as she picks up speed, cutting across the street, threading through the same gate I used earlier. I remember being that age when the best and worst was before me, and I wanted to know everything up front as if my fate could be negotiated. Who would I be with and what would I become? Where would I live and would I make a difference to anyone? I speculated, and at times tried to force my life in the direction I thought it should go. I wouldn’t do that now.

I watch the young woman’s retreating figure getting smaller, more distant and remote as she pedals through the Yard, between the sprawling brick Pusey and Lamont libraries. I don’t understand why anyone would want to know the future. I wonder if she does, and the conservative answer is probably. But the more likely one is absolutely. Whereas I don’t anymore.

“What did Marino want?” Benton lightly, affectionately touches my back as we follow the sidewalk.

Up ahead on our left is the split-rail paling, and set far back is the brick-and-white-trimmed neo-Georgian building, two stories with a glass-domed conservatory. The four tall chimneys rise proudly and symmetrically from different corners, and ten dormers stand sentry along the slate hipped roof.

THE LONG WALKWAY OF dark red pavers winds through rockery and ornamental shrubs. The sun has dipped behind buildings, and the oppressive air is like a steam room that’s slowly cooling.

Benton has taken off his suit jacket, and it’s neatly folded over his arm as we walk past the bright pink bottlebrushes of summer sweet, purple mountain laurel, and white and blue hydrangeas. None of it stirs in the breathless air, and only a scattering of dark green leaves shows the slightest blush of red. The longer it’s hot and parched, the more unlikely it is that there will be much in the way of fall colors this year.

As Benton and I talk, I do the best I can to answer his questions about Marino’s intentions, explaining he was emphatic that he didn’t want me out walking by myself. But I don’t think it’s his only agenda. I have the distinct impression that Benton doesn’t either.

“At any rate,” I continue telling the story, “he was out and about all the while he was on the phone, basically bird-dogging me while he pretended he wasn’t. Then he drove me the last fifty feet, and that’s where you found me a few minutes ago.”

“The last fifty feet?” Benton repeats.

“It’s what he mandated. I was to get into his car and he would drive me the last fifty feet. Specifically the last damn fifty feet.”

“Obviously what he wanted was to have a private face-to-face conversation with you. Maybe it’s true he didn’t want to talk over the phone. Or he used that as an excuse. Or it could be both,” Benton says as if he knows, and he probably does because it’s not hard for him to profile Pete Marino.

“So tell me why you decided to go for a stroll all by yourself, dressed in a suit and carrying heavy bags?” Benton gets around to that. “Aren’t you the one who warns everybody about the heat index-the way you just did with the woman on the bicycle a minute ago?”

“I suppose that’s why there’s the cliché about practicing what you preach.”

“This isn’t about practicing what you preach. It’s about something else.”

“I thought a walk might do me good,” I reply, and he’s silent. “And besides I had the theater tickets to pick up.”

I explain that I also had gifts to find at the college bookstore, The Coop. The T-shirt, nightgown and handsome coffee-table book may not be the most original presents I’ve ever bought but they were the best I could muster after wandering the aisles. As Benton knows all too well, my sister is difficult to shop for.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what she likes,” I’m saying, and he isn’t answering.

A popular musical and a peanut butter pie, for example, and Dorothy also will be very pleased with the skimpy Harvard tee that she can wear with her skimpier leggings or jeans. Her Ivy League shirt will be amply filled by her surgically enhanced bosom, and no doubt she’ll inspire many scintillating conversations in the bars of South Beach and Margaritaville.

“And the Cambridge photography book is something she can carry back to Miami as if it was her idea,” I explain as Benton listens without a word, the way he does when he has his own opinion and it’s different from mine. “And that’s exactly how my sister will play it when she shares pictures of Harvard, MIT, the Charles River with Mom. It will be all about Dorothy, which is fine if it means Mom enjoys her gift and feels remembered.”

“It’s not fine,” Benton says as we pass through the deepening shadows of tall boxwood hedges.

“Some things won’t change. It has to be fine.”

“You can’t let Dorothy get to you this way.” His tinted glasses look at me.

“I assume you’ve heard the nine-one-one call.” I change the subject because my sister has wasted quite enough of my time. “Apparently Marino has a copy but he wouldn’t play it for me.”

Benton doesn’t respond, and if he’s listened to the recording he’s not going to tell me. Had he been made aware of it, he might have requested a copy from the Cambridge Police Department, citing that the FBI wants to make sure a government official wasn’t misbehaving or being threatened.

My husband could come up with anything he wants to gain access to the 911 recording, and he’s quite friendly with the commissioner, the mayor, pretty much everybody who’s powerful around here. He didn’t need Marino’s help.

“As you may or may not know, someone complained about me supposedly disturbing the peace.” It sounds even more bizarre as I hear myself describe such a thing to someone whose typical day involves terrorists and serial killers.

I glance at him as we near the proud brick building in the gathering dusk, and his face doesn’t register whatever reaction he might be having.

“I assume Bryce told you about it after Marino confronted him, wanting to know exactly what happened in Harvard Square when he dropped me off,” I add.

“Marino’s feeling insecure about you,” Benton says, and I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question.

“He’s always insecure,” I reply. “But he’s also acting oddly. He was pushy about wanting to drive to the airport. He was overly interested in helping pick up Dorothy.”

“I wonder how he knows she’s coming here. Did you tell him? Because I didn’t.”

“Since we had almost no warning, I really haven’t had a chance to tell hardly anyone,” I reply. “Maybe Lucy mentioned it to him.”

“Or Desi might have. He and Marino have gotten to be real pals,” Benton says, and he can mask his emotions better than anyone I know but he can’t fool me.

I can tell when something hurts him, and the blossoming relationship between Marino and Desi obviously does. I’ve worried it would as Marino spends increasing amounts of time with a mercurial and insatiably inquisitive boy whose genetics are largely unknown to us. We don’t know what to expect. We can’t predict who he might take after.

It should be Janet’s late sister Natalie since it was her egg she’d had frozen when she was only in her twenties. Long before she did anything about it she was researching surrogate mothers and sperm donors. I remember her talking about being a single parent, and in retrospect it seems she had a premonition that her days on earth would be few. And they were. Seven years after Desi was born she would die of pancreatic cancer. It’s such a shame she’s not here to watch him change rapidly like a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.

“Look, I get it,” Benton is saying. “I’m not nearly as much fun as Marino. He’s already taken Desi fishing, started teaching him about guns, given him his first sip of beer.”

“Fishing is one thing but I’m not happy if Lucy and Janet think the rest of it is okay.”

“The point is-”

“The point is that you don’t need to be fun the same way Marino is,” I reply. “In fact I’m hoping you might be a good example.”

“Of what? A boring adult?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a sexy brilliant federal agent who drives fast cars and wears designer clothes. Desi just doesn’t know you yet.”

“Apparently Desi does know me. Marino told him I’m a retired school principal, and Desi asked me about it. I told him it was a hundred years ago when I was just out of college and working on my master’s degree,” Benton says.

“Did you explain that when you were getting started, a lot of FBI agents came from educational and legal backgrounds? That in other words yours was simply a sensible career path?” Even as I say it I’m aware that it’s too much explanation, and the well has been poisoned.

“There was no reason for Marino to bring that up except to make Desi afraid of me. Which is harmful and ill-advised because he’s headstrong enough already. I’ve noticed that increasingly he doesn’t like being told what to do.”

“I agree he doesn’t like to be controlled. But then most of us don’t.”

“Marino’s goal is to be Good Time Uncle Pete while I’m the school principal,” Benton says, and I watch the darkness settle heavily, hotly.

We’ve reached the wide brick patio arranged with wooden tables, red umbrellas, and potted shrubs and flower beds. On this last Wednesday of September, there shouldn’t be an empty chair out here. But there’s no one sitting outside the Faculty Club, no one in the world but us.