Chapter 24
Kat took the B to the E and then picked up the 7 train out to her old neighborhood in Flushing. She headed down Roosevelt Avenue toward Parsons Boulevard, walking toward her house without conscious thought, as you do with the places of your childhood. You just know every step. She had lived in Manhattan longer, knew the Upper West Side better in some ways, but it never felt like this. Not home exactly. This was stronger than that. This neighborhood felt like a part of her. It felt as though some of her DNA was in the blue clapboards and off-white Cape Cods and cracked pavement and small patches of lawn, like she’d been beamed away à la Star Trek but a few of her particles got left behind. Part of her would always be at Thanksgiving at Uncle Tommy and Aunt Eileen’s, sitting at the “kids’ table,” which was a Ping-Pong table with a king-size sheet doubling as a tablecloth. Dad always carved the turkey—no one else was allowed to touch it. Uncle Tommy poured the drinks. He wanted the kids to have wine too. He’d start off with a spoonful and stir it into your Sprite, making it somewhat stronger as you got older until you reached an age where you left the Ping-Pong table altogether and got a full glass of wine. Uncle Tommy retired after thirty-six years working as an appliance repairman for Sears, and he and Aunt Eileen moved down to Fort Myers, Florida. Their old house was now owned by a Korean family who’d knocked out the back wall and built an addition and slapped on aluminum siding because, when Uncle Tommy and Aunt Eileen lived there, the paint was flaking like it had a bad case of dandruff.
But make no mistake. Kat’s DNA was still there.
The houses on her block had always been crowded together but with all the bloated additions, they were even more so. TV antennas still stood atop most roofs, even though everyone had gone to either cable or a satellite dish. Virgin Mary statuary—some stone, most plastic—overlooked tiny gardens. Every once in a while, you’d see a house that had been totally razed in favor of shoehorning some over-the-top faded-brick McMansion with arched windows, but they always looked like a fat guy squeezing into too small a chair.
Her phone buzzed as she reached her old house. She checked and saw the text was from Chaz: Got license plate off gas station video.
She quickly typed back: Anything interesting?
Black Lincoln town car registered to James Isherwood, Islip, New York. He’s clean. Honest citizen.
She wasn’t surprised. Probably the name of an innocent limo driver hired by her new boyfriend. Another dead end. Another reason to put Dana and Jeff behind her.
The back door off the kitchen was unlocked, as always. Kat found her mother sitting at the kitchen table with Aunt Tessie. There were grocery store coupons spread out on the table and a deck of playing cards. The ashtray was filled with lipstick-tainted cigarette butts. The same five chairs from her childhood still circled the table. Dad’s chair had arms on it, thronelike; the rest didn’t. Kat had sat between her two brothers. They too had abandoned this neighborhood. Her older brother, Jimmy, graduated from Fordham University. He lived with his wife and three kids in a garish mansion on Long Island, in Garden City, and worked on a crowded floor as a bonds trader. He had explained to her a hundred times what exactly he did, but she still didn’t get it. Her younger brother, Farrell, had gone to UCLA and stayed there. He supposedly filmed documentaries and got paid to write screenplays that never get made.
“Two days in a row,” Mom said. “This has to be a world and Olympic record.”
“Stop it,” Tessie scolded. “It’s nice she’s here.”
Mom waved a hand of dismissal. Tessie rose and gave Kat a kiss on the cheek. “I have to run. Brian’s visiting and I always make him my famous tuna fish sandwich.”
Kat kissed her back. She remembered tuna fish at Aunt Tessie’s. Tessie’s secret: potato chips. She sprinkled them on top of the tuna. They added crunch and flavor if not nutritional value.
When they were alone, Mom asked, “You want some coffee?”
She pointed to her old coffee percolator. A tin of Folgers sat next to it. Kat had bought her a stainless steel Cuisinart coffee pod machine last Christmas, but Mom said it didn’t “taste right,” meaning, in her case, that it tasted good. Mom was like that. Anything more expensive wouldn’t work for her. If you bought a twenty-dollar bottle of wine, she preferred the one that cost only six. If you got her a brand-name perfume, she preferred the knockoff she’d get at the drugstore. She bought all her clothes at Marshalls or T.J. Maxx and only off the sale rack. Part of this was because she was frugal. Part of it was something much more telling.
“I’m fine,” Kat said.
“You want me to fix you a sandwich? I know nothing I’d make could ever be as good as Aunt Tessie’s tuna, which is really just Bumble Bee, but I have some nice sliced turkey from Mel’s.”
“That would be great.”
“You still like it with white bread and mayonnaise?”
Kat didn’t, but it wasn’t as if her mom had a seven-grain option on hand. “Sure, whatever.”
Mom lifted herself slowly, making a production of it, using the back of the chair and the table to assist her. She wanted Kat to comment. Kat didn’t bother. Mom opened the refrigerator—an old Kenmore model Uncle Tommy got them at cost—and pulled out the turkey and mayo.
Kat debated how to play this. There was too much history between them for games or subtlety. She decided to dive right in.
“Where did Dad go when he used to disappear?”
Mom had her back to her when Kat asked. She’d been reaching into the bread drawer. Kat looked to see her reaction. There was the briefest pause—nothing more.
“I’m going to toast the bread,” Mom said. “It tastes better that way.”
Kat waited.
“And what are you talking about, disappear? Your father never disappeared.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“You’re probably thinking of his trips with the boys. They’d go hunting up in the Catskills. You remember Jack Kiley? Sweet man. He had a cabin or a lodge or something like that. Your father loved to go up there.”
“I remember him going up there once. He used to vanish all the time.”
“Aren’t we dramatic?” Mom said, arching an eyebrow. “Disappear, vanish. You make it sound like your father was a magician.”
“Where did he go?”
“I just told you. Don’t you listen?”
“To Jack Kiley’s cabin?”
“Sometimes, sure.” Kat could hear the growing agitation in her mother’s voice “There was also a fishing trip with Uncle Tommy. I don’t remember where. Somewhere on the North Fork. And I remember he went on a golf trip with some of the guys at work. That’s where he was. He went on trips with his friends.”
“I don’t remember him ever taking you on trips.”
“Oh, sure he did.”
“Where?”
“What difference does it make now? Your father liked blowing off steam with the guys. Golfing trips, fishing trips, hunting trips. Men do that.”
Mom was spreading the mayo hard enough to scrape paint.
“Where did he go, Mom?”
“I just told you!” she shouted, dropping the knife. “Damn, look what you made me do.”
Kat started to get up to retrieve the knife.
“You just stay in your seat, little missy. I got it.” Mom picked up the knife, tossed it in the sink, grabbed another. Five vintage McDonald’s glasses from 1977—Grimace, Ronald McDonald, Mayor McCheese, Big Mac, and Captain Crook—sat on the windowsill. The complete set had six. Farrell had broken the Hamburglar when he threw a Frisbee indoors when he was seven years old. Years later, he bought Mom a replacement vintage Hamburglar on eBay, but she refused to put it up with the others.
“Mom?”
“What?” She started on the sandwich again. “Why on earth would you be asking me all this now anyway? Your father, God rest his soul, has been dead for nearly twenty years. Who cares where he went?”
“I need to know the truth.”
“Why? Why would you bring this up, especially now that the monster who murdered him is finally dead? Put it to bed. It’s over.”
“Did Dad work for Cozone?”
“What?”
“Was Dad on the take?”
For a woman who needed help getting up, Mom moved now with dizzying speed. “How dare you!” She twirled and, without any hesitation, slapped Kat across the left cheek. The sickening sound of flesh on flesh was loud, almost deafening in the stillness of the kitchen. Kat felt tears come to her eyes, but she didn’t turn away or even reach up to touch the red.
Mom’s face crumbled. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Did he work for Cozone?”
“Please stop.”
“Is that how he paid for the apartment in New York City?”
“What? No, no. He got a good deal, remember? He saved that man’s life.”
“What man?”
“What do you mean, what man?”
“What man? What was his name?”
“How am I supposed to remember?”
“Because I know Dad did a lot of good work as a cop, but I don’t remember him saving any real estate magnate’s life, do you? Why did we just accept that story? Why didn’t we ask him?”
“Ask him,” Mom repeated. She retied her apron string, pulling the ends a little too hard. “You mean, like you are now? Like an interrogation? Like your father was some kind of liar? You’d do that to that man—to your father? You’d ask him questions and call him a liar in his own home?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Kat said, but her voice was weak.
“Well, what do you mean? Everyone exaggerates, Kat. You know that. Especially men. So maybe your father didn’t save the man’s life. Maybe he only, I don’t know, caught a burglar who robbed him or helped him with a parking ticket. I don’t know. Your father said he saved his life. I didn’t question his word. Tessie’s husband, Ed? He used to limp, remember? He told everyone it was from shrapnel in the war. But he was clerical because of his eyesight. He hurt his leg falling down subway stairs when he was sixteen. You think Tessie went around calling him a liar every time he told that story?”
Mom brought the sandwich to the table. She started to cut it diagonally—her brother had preferred it that way—but Kat, ever the contrarian, had insisted sandwiches be cut to make two rectangles. Mom, again out of habit, remembered, angled the knife, cut it in two perfect halves.
“You’ve never been married,” Mom said softly. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?”