Emperor of Ocean Park

CHAPTER 48

I did not expect to be returning to Washington so soon. The bad news reached me this time through Mariah rather than Mallory Corcoran, but I half expect to find Uncle Mal at George Washington University Hospital when I arrive, even though, as far as I am aware, he has exchanged perhaps five sentences with Sally Stillman in his life. In the brightly colored waiting room just off the elevator, I find instead my eight-and-a-half-months pregnant sister, along with Sally’s boyfriend, Bud, looking sullen and helpless, as strong men in despair do, and a tiny clutch of strangers, presumably waiting for news on other loved ones who have attempted suicide. Then a tall, nervous, terribly skinny woman, a representative of the paler nation, steps forward to introduce herself as Paula, Sally’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. I did not even know my cousin was in it.

“She’s going to make it,” Paula assures me with a ghastly smile.

I nod and clasp her arm and lay a hand, briefly, on Bud’s shoulder. Then I hurry over to sit next to Mariah, who is alone in the middle seat of a rack of three, shaking her head, elegant in another tailored pantsuit, having managed somehow to create around herself a secret space which nobody dares try to penetrate, other than such obtuse fools as myself. “You okay, kiddo?” I ask, taking her hand.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know why she would do it.” Mariah rubs her belly, a gentle, loving circle, as though reassuring her unborn child that, contrary to appearances, the world is a safe enough place. My sister does not look at me. In her lap is one of her manila folders, the corner of a photograph peeking out. I wonder whether this is another view of the autopsy, or whether Mariah is up to something new. “She’s been doing so well. So well.”

“At what?”

“She was fighting it, Tal. She’d been sober for… oh, almost two months. Since just before Christmas. Giving her kids a present, she said. So she’s been going to all her AA meetings, going to church, working hard to stay sober.”

“What exactly happened?”

“I don’t know. She called Paula”-Mariah inclines her head toward Sally’s sponsor-“and said she couldn’t do it any more, she was taking pills. Paula did what she was supposed to do. When she realized she couldn’t talk Sally out of it, she called 911, then got over there herself, just in time to see them carry her out. Paula called me. I called you. And here we are.”

“Where are Sally’s kids?”

“They were with Thera when… when it happened. Sally took them to her mom’s house, then went home and took pills. I guess she didn’t want them to be the ones to find her.”

I try to think of another useful question. “Did you call Addison?”

Mariah gives me a look. “I’m sure he’ll be along when he can.” Then a return to the original theme: “I still don’t understand why she would do it.”

“Was she depressed?”

“How the hell should I know?” Unsatisfied, Mariah offers another variation: “I mean, Tal, she’s always depressed.”

“Have you seen her?”

“They won’t let me. She… the doctor said she has to be isolated. Some kind of rule, I guess. Because of what she did. Tried to do. No visitors allowed for a couple of days or something.”

I go over and check with the nurse and get the same information I already have: yes, it looks like Ms. Stillman is going to make it; no, we cannot see her for forty-eight to seventy-two hours. I allow myself the fantasy that Uncle Mal could get us in, but even superlawyers have limits. So Mariah and I sit side by side, hand in hand, bewildered, fearful, trying to be to each other what siblings should. My sister sheds no tears, although she seems on the verge a time or two. I reflect on God’s mysterious purposes, and marvel that my own problems, just this morning, seemed so huge.

Paula is standing in front of us again.

“Uh, excuse me.”

We look up at her as though she has the wisdom of the ages on her tongue.

“You’re Misha, right?” Paula asks slowly. Before I can answer, she turns to Mariah: “He’s Misha?”

My sister manages to find a smile somewhere: “That’s one of his names. He has a whole bunch of them.”

Paula looks confused. She is wearing a suit nearly as expensive as Mariah’s. Probably a lawyer, I decide, a specialist of some kind: she is too high-strung to be a lobbyist, and I cannot quite envision her in a courtroom, arguing cases. I see her chain-smoking while she designs complex tax straddles for overseas clients.

“But you are Misha, right?”

“Some people call me that,” I confirm. “My name is Talcott Garland. I’m Sally’s cousin.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute? Privately?”

Mariah is about to object, but I ask her with my eyes to let it be. Paula leads me off to another corner. I lean close because she wants to whisper. Paula explains that when Sally called, weeping, she just kept repeating that she couldn’t stand to know what she knew. When Paula asked what she meant, Sally mumbled, Poor Misha, poor, poor Misha. Paula pauses, perhaps to give me the chance to confess, and I assure her that I do not have the slightest idea what my cousin was talking about. Paula nods glumly, then adds that Sally told her one more thing before hanging up the phone: I don’t know why he had to get them both.

I frown. “Who had to get both of what?”

“I assumed she meant you. Because she started Poor, poor Misha again.”

“That I had to get them both?”

A curt yet inoffensive nod. “And she didn’t know why.”

Mariah and I spend the night at Shepard street. I am astonished that she has made this trip with her due date so near, but she turns out to have arranged a car and a driver for the six-hour trek each way. “It’s not that much more expensive than first-class air travel,” she explains.

In the morning, we have a quick breakfast before I hurry home. Mariah wants to know why I am rushing, what I think of Conan pleading guilty, is it true that I punched out my wife’s boyfriend in the law library like she heard from Valerie Bing, what I am going to do about what she told me Warner said, a thousand other things. I tell her it will all be over soon and I will explain it all when I can. I brace for an acid commentary on my selfishness, but the approaching birth of her sixth child seems to have made my sister serene.

“You be careful,” she says when the taxi arrives to take me to the train station.

I promise her I will. I have to be. Despite this detour, the concrete situation, as chess coaches like to say, has not changed. When I am back in Elm Harbor, I will have one shot at ending it all and setting my family free.

“Time’s up,” I whisper as the cab pulls away from the curb. The driver raises his eyebrows, perhaps thinking I want him to hurry. As we head down Sixteenth Street, picking up speed, I turn my head repeatedly, searching for the tail that has to be there.