Marked Man

69

“I’ve brought him home to you, Mrs. Kalakos,” I said.

“You good boy, Victor,” she said to me. “I knew you do just as I say.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” I said.

The room was dark, the air thick with incense, I was back in the chair, by the bed, where Mrs. Kalakos, as usual, lay stiff and still. And yet there was something very different about her appearance. Where normally her hair was wild and unkempt, this night it was combed and teased and set in place with bobby pins, the twirls at her temples taped to her flesh. Her cheeks held red circles, her lips were brightly painted, with two peaks in the middle of the upper one, and there was lace in her bodice. Miss Havisham waiting for her groom. Yikes.

“So where he is? Where my boy?” she said.

“He’s just outside the room, but I wanted to talk to you about him first.”

“Don’t make me wait, Victor. I’m old woman, without much breath left. Bring him to me. Now.”

“Charlie is very anxious to see you, Mrs. Kalakos. Both excited and scared.”

“What he need to be scared about from such pitiful bag of bones?”

“Because you’re his mother,” I said. “That’s enough terror for anyone. And then, also, because he knows you so well.”

“You try to flatter old woman, Victor?”

“That’s not my intent, ma’am. I just wanted to tell you that your son has been through a lot in the last couple of weeks, especially today. There was another attempt on his life just a few hours ago. And, even more significant, he was forced to dig up something very dark from his past. Something that happened as a result of the robbery thirty years ago.”

“What you trying to tell me, Victor?”

“There was a girl killed.”

“A girl?”

“The Adair child, the one that went missing.”

“I remember.”

“She was murdered by Teddy because she saw them with their stuff from the robbery. Charlie didn’t do the killing, but he knew about it. It was why things turned rotten for your son, why he ended up with the Warrick brothers and ended up on the run. And it is why he’s going to be spending some time in jail now. He knows you’ll find out about it, and he wanted me to tell you first.”

“And for this my Charlie spoiled his life?”

“That’s right, ma’am.”

“He’s even bigger fool than I thought.”

“What I’m asking, Mrs. Kalakos, is that you be especially gentle with your son.”

“What you think I am, Victor, monster?”

“No, ma’am, just a mother.”

“Okay, you told me. Now, Victor. No more delay. Let me see my boy.”

I stood up from the chair, went to the door, opened it, and nodded to the little group standing outside.

Thalassa, gray and tense and stooped, came in first. “Mama,” she said. Mrs. Kalakos lay unmoving on the bed, her eyes now closed as if she had been unconscious for days instead of talking to me just an instant before. “Mama, can you awaken? Mama? Are you still with us?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Kalakos with a voice weak yet rich with the drama of the grave. “I am still here. What have you for me, my child?”

“It is Charles,” said Thalassa, speaking her words as if speaking to the mezzanine far in the distance. “My brother, your son, Charles. He has come home to say good-bye.”

“Charlie? Here? My Charlie? My baby? Bring him, dear Thalassa, bring him to me.”

Thalassa stepped back, the door opened wider, and Charlie Kalakos, his hands cuffed in front of him and McDeiss close behind him, entered the room. He stepped hesitantly forward, knelt before his dying mother, clasped his cuffed hands together and laid them on the bed.

“Mama?” he said.

Without opening her eyes, she raised her hand toward Charlie. When it reached the top of his bald head, it dropped there and then moved down to feel his forehead, his eyes and nose, down and around his chin, and then up to his mouth.

“Is that my Charlie?” she said.

“Yes, Mama.”

“You’ve come back to me.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“To say good-bye as I requested.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Come closer, my child.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Charlie as he leaned forward so that his lips were almost touching his mother’s cheek.

Her left hand rose from his face, reared back, and slapped him. Hard. The sound was as loud as a shot in that room.

“What kind terrible fool you?” she said, her eyes now open and trained on her son. “How you run away so long? How you leave us scrape to save the house? How you let your friend kill that girl? You weak, you always weak. When will you stand up, Charlie, and be a man?”

“Mama,” he said, his cuffed hands rubbing away the tears from his cheek.

“Why wait for them to kill you? I ought kill you myself.”

“Mama. I came to say good-bye.”

She sat up in her bed. “Why good-bye? Where am I going? You never good enough, Charlie, that was problem. You were never smart enough, never strong enough.”

“Mama?”

“Your life nothing but failure.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” said Charlie, bursting out in sobs.

“Now you cry for all you’ve done to me? Now you cry? You think crying, it help? Come here, you failed little fool,” she said, raising both her hands. “Come to your mother, come to me, my little one.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie.

“I know you are.”

“Mommy.”

“Yes, my son. Yes. Shush now and come to me.”

And Charlie, weeping unabashedly now, lay his head on her thin, withered breasts, and she enveloped him with her arms, hugged him and held him close and squeezed him to her as if squeezing the life out of him. Charlie was crying, and Thalassa, off to the side, was crying, and Mrs. Kalakos, with her son now at her breast, was crying, too.

This whole sordid story had started with a plea from a mother to bring her son home, and now the Kalakos family was together again, the scary old woman with her vile, grasping power, the old man who never grew up, the sister off to the side as she seemed always off to the side. I had brought them together, and I was glad. Despite the Kabuki drama we had just passed through, I couldn’t stay dry-eyed at the scene before me. Whatever lay between this family, lines of attraction and repulsion and betrayal that would strangle Freud if he tried to untangle them, the emotion on display right then in that strange, dark room was shockingly pure. I don’t know if there is such a thing as redemption, but when I see something that pure come from a history that rotten, I begin to have greater hope for the fate of the world.