Where Are You Now?

16

L il Kramer had been nervous from the moment Carolyn MacKenzie phoned on Monday requesting a meeting, but on Wednesday, shortly after Carolyn left, had gone into the bedroom, laid down, closed her eyes, and begun to cry silently, tears running down her cheeks.

Lil could hear Gus saying his good-byes to Howard, then he walked into the bedroom and stood over her. At her husband’s impatient demand to know what her problem was, her eyes had flown open. “My problem? I’ll tell you what it is! Gus, I was in St. Francis de Sales Church at the Latin Mass last Sunday. I’ve been thinking about going ever since they began saying it again last year. Don’t forget, my father was a Catholic and used to take me to church once in a while, back when all the Masses were in Latin.”

“You never told me you went there Sunday,” Gus snapped.

“And why would I have told you? You have no use for any religion, and I didn’t need to hear you ranting that all clergymen are con men.”

Gus Kramer’s expression changed. “All right, all right. You were there. Hope you said a prayer for me. So what?”

“It was so crowded. You wouldn’t believe it. People were standing in the aisles. You heard what Carolyn MacKenzie just told us. That Mack was there! I know you won’t believe me, but at Mass I had the feeling that I saw someone familiar, just for a moment. But as you know, I’m blind as a bat if I don’t have my bifocals with me, and I forgot them when I changed my purse.”

“I repeat, so what?”

“Gus, don’t you understand what I’m saying? Mack was there! Suppose he does decide to come back! You know,” she finished in a whisper, “you know.”

As she had expected, Gus had immediately become angry. “Damn it, Lil, that guy must have had his own reasons for pulling the disappearing act. I’m sick of seeing you wringing your hands over him. Knock it off. Stop it. You told his sister just enough to satisfy her. Now keep your mouth shut. Look at me.” Roughly he leaned over the bed and raised her chin so that she could not avert her gaze from him. “You’re half-blind without your distance glasses. You’re jumping to conclusions because of that note Mack supposedly left in the collection. You didn’t see him there. So forget all about it.”

Lil would not have believed she had the courage to ask her husband why he was so sure. “How can you be so positive that Mack wasn’t there?” she demanded in a tense whisper.

“Just trust me,” Gus said, his face darkening with anger.

It was the same rage she had seen ten years ago when she told Gus what she had found in Mack’s room while she was cleaning. It was that rage that had made her wonder despairingly all these years if Gus could have been responsible for Mack’s disappearance.

In a clumsy gesture of affection, Gus ran his calloused hand over Lil’s forehead, then, with a heavy sigh, said, “You know, Lil, I’m beginning to think it may be a good idea after all for us to retire to Pennsylvania. If that sister of Mack’s starts dropping around here, sooner or later she’s going to get you so upset, you’ll say too much.”

Lil, who loved living in New York and who had dreaded moving to an idle retired life, whimpered, “I want to go right away, Gus. I’m so afraid for us.”