According to the district attorney, my perfect vision of a nurse came back to Natchez after thirty-seven years in Chicago not to retire, as so many Natchez natives, both black and white, do—but to die. If Dad has been treating Viola, he has his reasons. And if her death was hastened a little in the name of lessening pain or maintaining dignity, he had reasons for that, too. I’d like nothing better than to leave all this between my father and his former nurse. Unfortunately, I don’t have that option today.
Lifting the phone, I dial the private number of my dad’s office. Sometimes he answers this line (if he’s between patients, for example), but today it’s answered by a warm, alto female voice I recognize as that of Melba Price, my father’s head nurse. Much like Viola in the 1960s, Melba is my father’s right hand in the clinic, and like every other woman who’s occupied that position since 1963, she is black. I’ve never questioned the reason for this, and now that I do, I see one obvious possibility. Since more than half my father’s patients are black, perhaps he feels that black nurses make those patients more comfortable in clinical situations. Or maybe he just likes black women.
“Melba, this is Penn.”
“Lord, Penn, have you seen your daddy this morning?”
“No, but I need to.”
“He’s not here, and I haven’t seen him. Nobody has.”
“He didn’t leave word where he’d be?”
“No. But some of the things on his desk have been moved. I’ve wondered if he came in last night and worked on his records like he does sometimes.”
Since Melba occupies the position that Viola herself once did, I wonder if she shares the confidence my father placed in Viola. “Melba, I’m calling about a patient. A special patient. I know about the HIPAA rules and all that, but this has to do with Dad’s personal welfare. Do you know if he’s been treating a woman named Viola Turner? She has lung cancer.”
I hear a short inspiration, then a long sigh. “I wish I could help you, Penn. But that’s your daddy’s business. I can’t get mixed up in that. I’m not sure you should, either.”
Oh, boy. “I don’t want to, Melba. But I don’t have any choice. Viola’s dead, and there may be legal repercussions because of it. Problems involving Dad. Do you understand?”
“You need to talk to your father. Have you tried his cell phone?”
“He never answers his cell, you know that.”
“Try it anyway. He answers it sometimes.”
I thank Melba and hang up, then dial Dad’s cell phone, a number I use so rarely I can barely remember it. The phone kicks me straight to voice mail, which hasn’t even been set up to accept messages.
Man plans, God laughs, reads a framed cross-stitch on my wall, in both English and Yiddish. My first literary agent sent it to me. Placed around this proverb are framed advertisements from my mayoral campaign against Shadrach Johnson. If you want a mayor for black people, vote for the other fellow. If you want a mayor for white people, vote for the other fellow. If you want a mayor for all the people, vote Penn Cage. And this one: Historic Change for a Historic Town. Then my personal favorite: I don’t owe anybody in Natchez a favor. I owe everybody.
I wrote those slogans myself, but two years after being elected mayor of my hometown by a wide margin, I have inescapably failed to deliver the changes I promised. The reasons are legion, but at bottom I blame myself. Two months ago (after two years of beating my head against a wall of indifference), I decided to resign the office and return to writing novels. Then God laughed, and a series of shattering events suggested I might not have the moral right to abdicate the responsibility I’d so blithely taken on. My parents, my daughter, a good friend, and my fiancée reinforced fate’s suggestion, and my father’s heart attack finally crystallized my resolve to serve out my term.
In the weeks since, I have worked like a man possessed, dividing my time between cleaning up the fallout from the near sinking of a riverboat casino below the Natchez bluff and remaking our local government by forming improbable alliances, calling in favors, and raising money from the unlikeliest of sources. Working at my shoulder throughout this period has been my fiancée, Caitlin Masters, publisher of the Natchez Examiner. And pulsing beneath all this activity have been the preparations for our wedding, scheduled to take place twelve days from now, on Christmas Eve. Ever since the district attorney’s call, an itch of intuition has told me that whatever my father did last night is ultimately going to require the postponement of my wedding. I shudder to think of how my fiancée and my daughter would react to this eventuality.
“Mr. Mayor,” says Rose, “I’ve got your father on line one.”
Relief surges through me. “Thanks.” I press the button on the phone base. “Hello?”
“Penn?” In a single syllable, my father’s powerful baritone inspires calming confidence. “Peggy told me you were looking for me.”
“Dad, where are you?”
“Just running some errands.”
Errands! With my father, that could mean anything from shuffling through old bookstores to searching out ammunition for a Civil War–vintage musket. Before I blunder into a conversation about Viola Turner’s death, my lawyerly instincts kick in with surprising force. I spent most of my legal career as a prosecutor, but I’ve always known the first rule of defense lawyers: never ask your client if he did it. Even those who protest their innocence will be putting their lawyer in an untenable position. For if your client gives you one version of the truth, you cannot knowingly put him on the stand later and listen to him tell another. And no defense attorney wants to be bound by something as unforgiving as the truth.
The most alarming thing about this train of thought is that I can’t remember a single occasion when my father lied to me. So why am I planning for the possibility now? Paranoia? Or is the knowledge that Shad Johnson is an unscrupulous man with no love for my family forcing me into such pragmatism? “Dad, is anybody with you?”
“No. Why?”
“I got a call a couple of minutes ago from the district attorney. I don’t want you to say anything until I finish telling you what he said. All right?”