Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It was Sunday. I was drinking coffee with my right hand and driving with my left. Pearl was asleep in the backseat, and Susan was beside me drinking coffee from a big paper cup which she held in both hands. We were on the road to Newburyport, and we had chosen to take the old Route 1, through the slow rural landscape north of Boston.

“How’s your lawsuit?” I said.

“I think the insurance company plans to settle,” Susan said.

“Thus leaving you neither vindicated nor convicted.”

“But they’ll probably cancel afterwards,” she said.

“Insurance companies are fun,” I said. “Aren’t they.”

Susan nodded. She dipped into her coffee, her big eyes gazing at the road across the top of the cup.

“And the boy is still dead,” she said.

“And it’s still not your fault,” I said.

She was quiet, her face still half hidden by the coffee. In the backseat Pearl snored occasionally, the way she had begun to do as she got older.

“Fault has little to do with sadness,” Susan said. “One of the things that helps kids get through the difficulty of being a gay adolescent is to have someone. I don’t mean a shrink. But a friend, a lover, someone. But the thing they need help with prevents them from getting it.”

“Because they’re too conflicted about being homosexual,” I said.

“I hate that word,” Susan said into her cup.

“Homosexual?”

“Yes.”

“Too clinical?”

“Makes me think of grim men in lab coats,” Susan said. “Studying a pathology.”

I had nothing to say about that, and decided in this case to try saying nothing. Susan drank her coffee. I drank mine.

“Where’s Hawk?” Susan said.

“I thought we’d have Sunday alone together.”

“Except for the baby.”

“Except for her.”

“Is it safe?”

“Even without Hawk,” I said, “I am not an amateur.”

“True,” Susan said. “Have you ever considered that your person might have been suicidal?”

“Nathan Smith?”

“Yes. A closeted gay man. Trying to pretend.”

“There was no gun,” I said.

“Too bad, he so fit the profile. A life spent in deception, finally too much.”

I shrugged.

“How are you with this kid’s death?” I said.

“I’ve gone over every therapy session ten times.”

“You remember them all?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And I did what there was to do,” Susan said.

“And better than most people could have,” I said.

“How do you know,” Susan said. “You’ve never been in therapy with me.”

I smiled.

“Why, this is therapy,” I said. “Nor am I out of it.”

“Hamlet?” Susan said.

“Mephistopheles,” I said.

“Who?”

“Marlowe,” I said. “Doctor Faustus.”

“Smarty-pants.”

“So how come I can’t figure out what’s going on with the Nathan Smith thing?”

“I’ll bet you could if Christopher Marlowe did it.”

“A slam dunk,” I said.

“Have you thought about what kind of woman marries a gay man?” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a conclusion?”

“No. I can’t figure her out.”

“Maybe you need to,” Susan said. “Maybe you need to find out more about Mr. Smith’s life as a gay man. Maybe you need to find out why Mrs. Smith married him.”

“A tip?” I said. “A crime-stopper tip?”

“Two tips,” Susan said. “I have a Ph.d. from Harvard.”

“A hotbed of crime-stopping,” I said.

“A hotbed,” Susan said.

We drove on to Newburyport. Susan shopped. Pearl and I stood outside each shop, and waited. Pearl slept in the car while we ate lunch at the Black Cow. Susan and Pearl and I went for a walk on the beach at Plum Island. None of us talked about business for the rest of the day.