Face Time

CHAPTER 20

The story of the whole night spills out. Gaylen describes it almost faster than I can even envision it happening. Yes, she admitted, she had been in the bar, not her mother. Arguing with her bully of a father, bitterly, loudly, because she wanted to move out, into an apartment of her own. And as always, he’d refused, laughing, and told her he’d never allow her to leave. Her father pounded down tequila. She’d had two margaritas. She’d been dizzy, they’d hit her hard. They’d walked home, still arguing. He was aggressively, intimidatingly drunk. She’d stalked off to her bedroom and collapsed, still dressed, on top of her bed.

The next morning, her mother shook her awake and told her Ray was dead.

It had taken her more than once around the block to tell her story, as the evening waned into the breezes of a New England summer night.

Now curled against the back of the worn and anemically once-red booth in the Bizzy Bee coffee shop, Gaylen has her head down, her eyes covered with sunglasses. I’ve yanked my hair back with a clip and put on my reading glasses, hoping my do-it-yourself disguise will fool any Channel 3 viewers. It doesn’t matter. Weary-looking customers in work shirts, nurses’ uniforms, oil-stained jeans silently stir coffee and pick at tired sandwiches, stolidly ignoring the intense conversation of the two unfamiliar women in the corner booth. So far, actually, I’m mostly listening. Bursting with questions and dying to take out a notebook, but I know it’s better to wait. She seems ready to talk. Let her give me all she wants. And then, maybe, I can even get more. Could I be sitting with a murderer?

We both have iced teas, our second refills. The condensation drips down the nubby sides of the tall plastic glasses. Gaylen jabs at a wedge of lemon with her straw.

“Gaylen? Should we talk about what happened that morning?” I put my chin in my hands, leaning toward her, trying to convey my willingness to listen. “You’ve been hiding for a long time now. You’ve given up your life. And your mother-if she’s innocent-has had her life unfairly taken away. I can’t believe that’s how you’d want to spend your life. Or your mother to spend hers. Is it?”

Gaylen’s still staring at her tea. Now, with one hand she twists the glass, around and around, smearing a puddle of water on the speckle-topped plastic table. All I hear is the buzz of background café conversation and the slosh of the ice in her glass. Finally, she looks up from under her lashes.

“What do they say in TV?” she says. “Off the record?”

I’m definitely not having that conversation. “Listen, Gaylen, like I told you,” I say, ignoring her question. “The Constitutional Justice Project, Will Easterly, Oliver Rankin-they think your mother is innocent. My producer and I are researching the story. This train has left the station.”

No answer from Gaylen.

“So let me ask you this,” I begin. “And we’re on the record. Back then, did you mother tell you she killed-” I pause, just briefly, my mind registering my uncertainty that Ray Sweeney was actually Gaylen’s father, another complicated subject “-she killed your father?”

“She confessed,” Gaylen says. She takes a deep breath, a gesture so consuming I see her shoulders rise, then fall, then sag. She looks me in the eye, challenging. And says no more.

“Gaylen? That’s not what I asked you.” I meet her eyes. “Listen. I’m going to lay this out for you. I don’t think your mother is guilty of murder. I think she’s protecting someone. And I think it might be you.”

This is a risky tactic. She might leap out of this booth and try to head for the hills. I reach across the table and put one hand, gently, on her arm. “If your mother is protecting you-it means she loves you very much. But it means she’s going to spend most of her life locked away. Behind bars. Because of you. Is that what you want?”

Gaylen leans against the back of the booth, her eyes assessing, her expression uncertain.

My hand is still on her arm, but I slowly take it away. “You want to visit your mother in prison, just see her once a week, not even be able to touch her? Or hug her?”

Gaylen’s face begins to crumble. I can almost see her will disintegrating. She’s what-twenty-four years old? Twenty-five? She’s gone through hell. And she’s probably still there.

“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?” I persist. “I bet you haven’t. You could have just run away. But you didn’t. I know it’s because you don’t want to lose your mother, Gaylen. That means you truly love her. Do you think this is the best way to show it?”

“I…I…I don’t know,” Gaylen says. “Mother…I…she-confessed.” The word confessed comes out twisted, as if she doesn’t like the taste or sound of it. “She says she remembers what happened that night. I don’t. And she refuses to discuss it. She told me to disappear, Charlie, but I couldn’t do that.” She sighs, a bone-rattling full-body sigh, and briefly puts her face in her hands. “I changed my name and I left Swampscott. But I couldn’t leave her. And if she didn’t kill my father, why would she say she did?”

“Well,” I begin, taking a tentative step onto shaky ground, “because-”

“I know why she would,” Gaylen interrupts. “Because she thinks I killed him.”

And there we have it. I’m still, silent, waiting.

“And what if I did? And I don’t remember? Am I supposed to go to the police and say, ‘Excuse me, Officer, I might be guilty of murder but I don’t know’?” She puts her hands back to her cheeks and speaks through her fingers. “You’re right. I’ve lost my mother. And I’ve lost myself. And I want us back.”

The streetlights click on, illuminating the storefronts of the quiet street outside our window as the two of us sit across from each other, measuring our options, Gaylen’s looking more and more fragile. And I don’t blame her. I push forward another step. “You’re studying domestic violence, right? If Ray Sweeney hurt you, even threatened you, and it was all an accident, you know that-”

The whir of my cell phone, set on vibrate, buzzes insistently and audibly inside the purse tucked beside me. Damn. Who could be-? Mother. What if something’s wrong? I hold up a finger, shake my head in frustration. “I’m so sorry, Gaylen. It might be my…” I pause. “I need to take this.”

I flip open my phone. Franklin’s voice crackles through the receiver. “I’m at Swampscott PD,” he says. “Chief’s office.” His voice is terse, and I can feel the tension even through the annoying hiss of our static-filled connection. “Found Clay Gettings.” Something something. “Detroit.” Something something. “You at the bar?”

I can barely make out his words as the connection weakens. He’s still talking, but it’s becoming more impossible to comprehend. At least this is good news. We knew Claiborne Gettings, the other cop who investigated the Ray Sweeney murder, had moved to Detroit. If Franklin’s found him, he could confirm the lineup photos we saw were not what cops showed the witnesses back then. At least, he could if he’s not in on the cover-up.

I see Gaylen shift in her seat. She’s eyeing the back of the restaurant. If she’s looking for the bathroom, I guess that’s fine. If she’s looking for a back door, that could be disaster. I hold up a hand, stopping her, as I try to get a word through the buzz.

“Franklin?” I say. “Can’t really hear you. You found Claiborne Gettings? That’s great.” I glance at Gaylen, who seems to have settled back into the booth and is digging for something in her tote bag. “Where? Will he talk to us?”

“Dead.” That, I can hear. “Drowned. Behind the Lynn docks.”

A flare of static is not all that makes me wince. This is no coincidence.

“Apparently he came to town last week for some family thing,” Franklin continues. “They found him this morning.”

“An accident?” I ask, although I fear I know the answer.

“No,” Franklin says. “Signs of a struggle, police say. Seems like someone wanted him out of the picture.”

I hear a voice in the background, apparently talking to Franklin. Finally Franklin comes back to the phone. “Gotta go,” he says. “Seems like they might have a suspect. Later.” And he’s gone.

I stare at the dead phone in my hand, trying to process Franklin’s news. Then Gaylen passes a business card across the table. Its edges are splitting and frayed. It’s creased and worn. I can see it once was white. And I see whose name is on it.

“Did you say Clay Gettings? The cop who investigated the murder?” she asks. “I’ve been carrying around his card, all these years. He said if I ever remembered anything, to call him. I just couldn’t let go of it, somehow.” She tucks it back into her wallet, a physical reminder of another time. “Did you say accident?”

“Ah, Gaylen, I don’t know, really. That was my producer, Franklin Parrish, who’s at the Swampscott Police Department. Apparently there’s been an incident.” Things are moving too fast, and I feel as if the china plates on sticks I’m attempting to juggle are about to come crashing down. I was just connecting with her, I could sense her opening up and I don’t want to lose her. “Go back, Gaylen, to what we were talking about. That’s the most important thing. Are you willing to face your past? And your future? Can you help us find out what really happened?”

Gaylen bites her lower lip. I can see tears welling in her frightened eyes. She’s forlorn and forgotten, a non-person trying to carry an impossible secret. Trying to make an impossible decision.

“Do you think I killed my father?” she asks. “Or do you think my mother did?”

And now she’s asked an impossible question.

“Do you?” I reply. I do know the answers, I decide. But I want to hear what she says.

“It’s the reason I didn’t leave,” she says. “I’ve been hoping, praying, that by staying near Mom, seeing her, being with her, I could convince her to tell me what happened to our family. And I try to help other women in trouble-it’s the only way I can keep myself from feeling horribly guilty. I know she never loved my father, and he did have his problems. They barely spoke. And we…we fought, you know? But like any father and daughter. I think he loved me. I do.”

Gaylen’s petite face turns wistful, and the furrows in her forehead soften. “Mom and I had a secret symbol, when I was growing up.” She holds up two fingers in a V.

I think back to the photo of her I still have stored in my phone. I thought she was giving the peace sign. But apparently it was more than that.

“It meant ‘to us’-the two of us, you know?” she continues. “In it together? Now we’re still that way. In it together. But our lives didn’t turn out the way we’d planned.”

Lights in the restaurant snap off, the farthest in the back, then another, then another. I squint through the approaching darkness. One white-aproned waitress, leaning wearily against the counter, points meaningfully to her watch. I smile when she holds up two fingers, but of course she means they close in two minutes. When I turn back to Gaylen, she’s touching her eyes with a blue-flowered paper napkin.

“Maybe you can help us.” Her voice has dropped to a whisper. “You’re right. And I know it. She’s sacrificing her life for me. I can’t let that happen. I’d rather know the truth than let her suffer one more day.”

“ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY not guilty,” I say to Franklin. The phone is tucked between my shoulder and my cheek as I attempt to sweep up the pellets of cat food Botox has scattered across the kitchen floor. She’s figured out how to shred open the pre-packaged pouches of Tender Vittles, so if I dare to arrive home too late for her tastes, she simply serves herself. She has to maintain her “if you don’t come home I could die” act, so after she opens the pouch, she only eats one or two of the puffy brown morsels and disdains the rest. I’m ravenous, too, having survived today on about six cups of coffee and a gallon of iced tea. Happily, the digital timer on the nuke is ticking down toward “reheated” for my usual low-fat soon-to-be-unfrozen lasagna.

“Gaylen could have taken off, you know? Disappeared?” I continue. “Instead she hides out in a shelter and sneaks in to see her mother. And now she says she wants to find the truth, too.”

I nudge Botox out of my path with the edge of my flip-flop and adjust the phone. I’m still in my work uniform of pearls, slacks and sweater set, but I’m finally out of my heels. And the tick of the microwave is making me feel as if I’m right out of Pavlov’s lab.

“I told her we’d protect her identity, as long as we can at least, so she won’t run. I think she won’t. She’s clearly devoted to her mother. You’ll be shocked, how much they look alike, so no surprise the witnesses got it wrong. Especially if they were only shown one photo. But Franko, here’s-”

“Charlotte,” Franklin interrupts. “Think about that night. The two witnesses-impossible to find. The bartender-missing. Claiborne Gettings-dead. Right now, the only person available who knows what photographs, or photograph, they used that night is Tek Mattheissen. And he’s going to say they all chose Dorinda from a legal, appropriate array. And he’s going to remind everyone she confessed. Gaylen could confess from now until kingdom come that she’s guilty. No one is going to care. Oz and Tek Mattheissen want Dorinda Sweeney in prison. They need her in prison to pave their way to power.”

My microwave beeps, and I almost cry with happiness. “Got to call you back,” I say. “Lasagna time.” My phone makes the call-waiting click. Food, my brain wails. Now. “Other line, Franko,” I say, “I-”

“Charlotte,” Franklin persists. “One more thing.”

“Let me see who’s calling. I’ll be right back.” Without waiting for a response, I click to the other line. “McNally, News-I mean, hello?”

“Charlie, it’s me,” Josh says. “We’re home. I’m sorry to call you this late, but-”

“Hey, sweets, never too late for you. Hang on,” I say. “Got to get rid of Franklin.” Without waiting for a response, I click back. “What?” I say. “I’m so sorry, it’s-”

“Charlotte, just be careful,” Franklin says. “If Gaylen didn’t kill her father, and Dorinda didn’t kill him…”

In the midst of juggling two phone calls, imminent starvation, a beeping microwave, a delicious boyfriend and a neurotically prowling cat, I see where Franklin is going. If Dorie and Gaylen are innocent, that means someone else is guilty. It means Dorinda is sacrificing her life to protect an innocent person. And one more thing.

“It means-”

“Yeah,” Franklin says. “It means there’s someone else. Dorie’s unwittingly protecting the actual murderer. A killer who’s still out there.”

We’re silent for a second, then I realize…Josh. “We need to talk about this,” I say. “But I have to call you back. Josh on the other line.”

I’m impatient to hear Josh’s voice. We’ve only grabbed the briefest of phone connections over the past few days and I’m having serious affection withdrawal. They’re probably going to find me sprawled on the kitchen linoleum in a low-blood-sugar coma, but I can’t ignore him. Passion trumps hunger. I click the button to get him back.

It’s a dial tone.

A droning, taunting, unmistakable indication that Josh has hung up. Either he’s annoyed with me for putting him on hold. Or something is wrong. And if something is wrong, my-boyfriend-called me for help. And I put him on hold. My stomach suddenly hurts so much that any future thought of hunger is impossible. My only concern is Josh. And why he’s not still on the other end of the line.

“Damn,” I mutter, as I punch in the wrong numbers. I’m calling his home, I realize. But he’s in Truro. With Penny. I’m an idiot. Why didn’t I hit star six-nine and just redial?

Another ring. No, wait, he said he was home. Why are they home? They’re supposed to be in Truro. Another ring. No, they’re back this week. Josh has some Bexter Academy faculty seminar. Of course, everything could be fine, and I’m just so tired and hungry that the most normal phone call in the world escalates to soap-opera drama.

“Hello?” It’s Josh.

“It’s me,” I begin. “I’m sorry-”

“Charlie,” he says, interrupting. “Can you…can you come over? It’s Penny, she’s…” He pauses, and in the background, I hear a little girl crying.

JOSH FILLED ME IN on the car phone, as I, mourning my abandoned lasagna, crunched a meal on wheels of about a million salted almonds and one protein bar. As a result, I’m no longer starving and also semi-prepared when I enter Penny’s pale green-and-white-striped bedroom and see the empty fishbowl on her glossy white chest of drawers. Penny is sitting on the floor, leaning back against the side of her bed, but all I can see are her bare feet and a tiny bit of her tanned ankles. She’s pulled the daisy-covered bedspread over her head.

“Pen?” I say, taking a step onto the fluffy green rug. “It’s me. Um-Charlie.” I sit down beside her and pull the daisies over my head, too. The two of us are in a tented world of our own. In the hazy fabric-baffled light, I can see her red nose and tear-matted eyelashes.

“Flo,” she says. “And Eddy.” Her wisp of a voice, morose and melancholy, pronounces their names as if from a roll call of fallen heroes. “Got white.”

I tuck my arm through her elbow and stare with her at the gauzy underside of the bedspread. “Poor fish,” I say. “You loved them, didn’t you? They were good fish. And we will miss them.”

We sit in silence for a moment. Penny makes no move to pull away. I hear a little snuffle. She uses one sleeve of her ruffly pink T-shirt to wipe her nose.

“Should we talk about them?” I ask softly. “What’s your favorite story about Flo and Eddy?”

“They were cute fish,” Penny replies after a moment. “They would swim after each other. And they liked when I gave them food. And they were pretty in the sun. Like gold.”

“Like little treasures, right? And they loved you, too, don’t you think?”

I hear Penny breathing, sniffing a few times, as if she’s considering. “Yes,” she says. “They did.”

“Creatures like goldfish, they aren’t like us humans,” I say. “They live a long time for fish, you know, sweetheart? But it doesn’t always seem like a long time to us.” I pause. “So, we will miss them. But we were glad to know them.”

Penny pulls her feet back under the spread, wraps her arms around her legs, then plunks her chin onto her knees. “I knew it would happen,” she says, still staring into the flowered cotton. “Everybody I love…goes.”

I don’t know how to be a mother. I don’t know how to deal with a little girl who feels as if the rug has been yanked out from under her still-uncertain little legs. Who thought she knew what she could rely on and how her world works until suddenly, through no fault of her own, it doesn’t anymore. Penny’s bereavement isn’t only about fish. And this isn’t the first time today I’ve been faced with this.

“You know, Pen,” I begin. “I was talking to someone else today, who’s missing someone. Someone she loves very much. And you’ll never, ever guess what she does. Want to hear?”

A sniff from beside me, then the back of her hand unabashedly wipes her runny nose. “I guess,” she says. “Was she missing her fish?”

“Nope,” I reply. I edit the story a bit. “She was missing her best friend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But they had a secret signal, you know? And she showed it to me.” I look down at Penny, who’s turned her face up to mine, inquiring. I nod, as if I have some profoundly valuable information. “It’s very powerful. And it means-it means no matter what, you’re a team. And it means no one is going to leave. Even if you’re far apart, you’re together.”

“What is it?” Penny whispers. Her brown eyes are wide, leftover tears still clinging to her lashes, but she’s turned toward me and she’s put one little hand on my knee. “Can you tell me it?”

I nod, closing my eyes briefly to emphasize the gravity of the moment. “I think we should take off the quilt, okay? The secret signal is better in the light.”

With a careful hand, Penny deliberately peels back the quilt. Her thin brown hair clings to the fabric as she curls out from underneath. I lift up my end, too, and turn to the little girl who’s looking so expectantly at me.

I slowly hold up two fingers. “Do like this,” I instruct.

Staring intently at my example, she carefully arranges her right hand in the peace sign. She holds it up and a watery smile begins to form.

“Like this?” she asks.

“Perfect,” I say. “Now. Any time you give me that sign? I know you’re on my team. It means the two of us. And you know what? Do you think we should go show it to your Dad? Let him in on the secret sign?”

A glimmer of anticipation begins to erase her sorrow. She carefully reties the drawstring of her baggy purple cotton pants and pushes her pearlized white plastic headband back from where it’s fallen down her forehead. “Think Dad will get it?” she asks. “That it’s like, the two of us? Me and Dad? And we’ll only know it?”

“Just you two.” I nod solemnly.

“Yay,” Penny says. She practices the sign again, then scampers toward the bedroom door. As she enters the hall, she turns around, a smile-almost a smile-on her face. “And, um, you’ll know it, too.”

And she’s gone.

THE PATTERNS ON THE CEILING are different in Josh’s bedroom. My apartment is third floor, too high for the lights of traffic. When I snap off my night-table lamp, it’s dark. Here in Josh’s bed, I can watch the shadows flicker on the white walls, the headlights from passing cars rising and falling, crosshatches of shadow floating by through the window blinds, appearing then disappearing.

“You’re good with Penny, “Josh murmurs. He spoons closer and nestles one arm over me. He tucks his hand around me.

“Ah, well, she’s adorable,” I say, snuggling in. “And, you know, it’s kind of a journey for us both.” I breathe in the scent of Josh’s arm, wondering, as always, how he can unfailingly make me feel so female. “Life is unexplored territory, you know? For a little kid?”

I think about my mom. How she taught me about putting the peanut butter on first, how to ride on the El, how to make a new friend. She comforted me when I failed the driver’s test and when I didn’t get invited to the prom. Even though she keeps telling me not to come visit, maybe, now, it’s my turn to comfort her. She just won’t say it. I smile into my pillow. Seems like thinking about being a stepmother is forcing me to think about being a daughter. Maybe I need some exploration there, too.

“And I kind of feel, well, Penny and I are exploring together,” I continue out loud. “Each other’s worlds. And what we mean to each other. Must be hard for her.

“Josh?” I say softly. I can feel his breath on my skin, even the touch of his eyelashes. For a while tonight, there was no thought of anyone or anything except the two of us. No sounds that could be translated into actual words. Our private passion was all that mattered. If he’s still in that world, I don’t want to interrupt. I love it there, too.

But my eyes are wide open and my mind is racing ahead.