The funeral home is in Baltimore, on the long avenue that dead-ends at Fort McHenry, the military installation that was under attack when Francis Scott Key dubbed a still young country as the home of the free and the land of the brave. Twenty years ago, this was a working-class neighborhood, but now Under Armour crouches near one end of Fort Avenue, while a luxury high-rise to be known as Anthem House is under construction a few blocks to the west. AJ keeps telling Lu that Baltimore has become a magnet for millennials, spiking rents in the neighborhoods around the harbor. In this part of Baltimore, artisanal cocktails and new spins on softshell crabs are in demand, while in the “other” Baltimore an estimated one to four people live in food deserts. These are AJ’s facts, AJ’s stats, AJ’s rhetoric. Lu likes a good cocktail.
But while Lu realizes it is a markedly different city from the one she left only five years ago, she feels its working-class character is as intractable as kudzu. Parking her car, she notices a man with his T-shirt rolled up to his armpits—the better to expose his remarkably tanned barrel of a belly—kneel and pray before a shrine of Mary outside the local parish. The temperature will barely top seventy today, but in Baltimore, that’s a reason to dig out your shorts and flip-flops. There aren’t enough high-rises or Starbucks or Chipotles to eradicate Baltimore’s eccentrics.
There is only one visitor in the room assigned to Rudy’s wake—Fred, in a hushed, urgent conversation with the Drysdales.
“I’m truly sorry for your loss,” Lu says, offering her hand to both parents. Neither one takes it. “This is not what anyone wanted.”
Mr. Drysdale all but rolls his eyes: “Guess he saved the state some money, didn’t he?”
Oh, the words, the taunts that spring to mind. Saved you some money, I guess. Your son was well on his way to being the state’s paid guest for the rest of his life. But a politician must be politic, even in a room with three people who are guaranteed never to vote for her.
“I’ll always regret that he didn’t have his day in court. That doesn’t mean I don’t think he was guilty. But I also believe he was entitled to a fair trial. And that Mary McNally’s family deserved answers, a sense that justice had prevailed.”
She leans hard on the victim’s name, just as her father taught her. Another family lost someone. I won’t let you forget that.
“They didn’t even bother to show up for the trial,” Mrs. Drysdale says.
“It would have been expensive for them to be here throughout the trial. We talked about it and decided that they should save their money, come to court for the sentencing phase, when they would have been allowed to give impact statements.” In an attempt to appear modest, she adds: “Assuming, of course, there was a sentencing phase.”
“Oh, we know he did it,” Mr. Drysdale says. “But your kid is your kid. Even when he’s in his fifties. For better or worse. It’s funny that you say those words when you make your wedding vows. They should make you recite that oath the day your kid is born.”
“Arthur.” Mrs. Drysdale almost squeaks in her fury. “We do not know that Rudy did any such thing. We will never know.”
Sure, Lu thinks. If, by knowing, you mean you require some unimpeachable primary source—a video demonstrating the deed, a confession. But, by those standards, we would know almost nothing. What happened on 9/11? How do you know?
She says nothing. No one says anything. The silence should be uncomfortable, but it’s not, not for Lu. The casket is closed, inevitable given the circumstances of his death. She isn’t faking her sympathy. She’s genuinely sorry for the Drysdales’ loss. This is not where a parent’s journey should end, ever. Did you wash his clothes, Mrs. Drysdale? Did he come to you that night, tell you he was in trouble? What do you “know”?
“A lot of our family still lives around here, so we came back to the neighborhood to bury him,” Mrs. Drysdale says, offering an explanation for a question Lu hasn’t asked. “They’ll probably come later.”
“Oh.”
“They told us we were crazy.” The unfortunate word hangs in the air. “When we moved to Columbia. They said it was for hippies and—well, they said it was for hippies.”
“Almost forty years ago? I suppose a lot of people did think that about Columbia.”