Melancholy Baby

22

Rosie waited in the car. I went in and sat with the Markhams in the silent living room of their soundless house. There were no lights on. The Markhams sat on the couch. He at one end, she at the other. I sat in the flowered easy chair. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight that came in from the front windows.

“Two men beat up your daughter yesterday,” I said.

“My God,” Markham said. “Is she all right?”

“She is,” I said.

“Where is she?” Markham said.

“She’s safe,” I said. “Can you think of any reason why that would happen?”

“No. My God!”

“She probably made it up,” Mrs. Markham said.

“Why would she do that?” I said.

“She makes up all kinds of stuff,” Mrs. Markham said.

Well, well. The gloves were off.

“She does?” I said.

“All this nonsense about who her parents are. The girl is a born liar.”

Mr. Markham stared at his wife for a moment and frowned.

“Come on, Barb!” he said.

“She is, George, and you’d know it, too, if you didn’t always coddle her.”

“She did have some bruises,” I said.

“Probably one of her drug-addict boyfriends,” Mrs. Markham said.

“She wasn’t,” Markham said, “you know, I mean, there was nothing else happened to her?”

“No,” I said.

“Why did they do it?” Markham said.

“They told her to stop investigating her parentage.”

“She’s crazy,” Mrs. Markham said. “She’s a crazy liar.”

All three of us were quiet. The dust motes drifted. The silence pressed in.

“Sequence,” I said finally, “doesn’t necessarily prove cause. But the beating happened shortly after I talked to you about your days in Moline.”

Mrs. Markham looked quickly at her husband.

“Moline?” she said.

Mr. Markham looked straight at me.

“I told you before,” he said. “I’ve never been to Moline.”

“What is this about Moline?” Mrs. Markham said to me.

“You lived there twenty years ago. Your husband was an announcer at WMOL.”

“That’s crazy,” Mrs. Markham said. “I don’t even know where Moline is.”

“Are you suggesting that I had something to do with Sarah getting hurt?” Mr. Markham said.

“Did you mention our conversation to anyone?”

“No. Of course not. It was too absurd.”

“But if it were that absurd, wouldn’t you tell people about it? Your wife, for instance. Wouldn’t you say, maybe, like, ‘Gee, Barb, that crazy broad that Sarah hired claims we lived in Moline, Illinois’?”

“I don’t waste time on foolishness,” Mr. Markham said, “Neither does my wife.”

“Well,” I said. “Somebody, for some reason, doesn’t want this investigation to go further. Can you imagine who that would be?”

Mr. Markham took in some air.

“Of course, Barbara and I would like it to stop. It is painful for us. But you can’t believe we would harm our own daughter.”

“She made the whole thing up,” Mrs. Markham said.

“You could settle it with a simple DNA comparison,” I said.

“We will not dignify her lies like that,” Mrs. Markham said.

I looked at Mr. Markham; he shook his head. I stood.

“Well,” I said. “I have a dog waiting for me.”

Neither of them stood.

“For what it is worth,” I said, “your daughter is not quitting, and neither am I. Sooner or later we will know the truth, whatever the truth turns out to be.”

“The truth is,” Mrs. Markham said, “that she’s a self-indulgent, spoiled, drug-addicted liar.”

I smiled at her.

“No more Mrs. Nice Guy?” I said.

Mrs. Markham didn’t answer. Mr. Markham said nothing. I had nothing else to say.

So I left.