“Want a hit?” she said, and suddenly he did, a piece of the world they’d left at the border. He extended his right hand, eyes still on the road, and felt her place the joint in the V of his fingers. He drew on it, aware of the quick glare at the tip, then held the smoke in his lungs. They passed it back and forth, still not saying anything, until he felt it grow hot in his fingers.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’m driving.” He saw her place the end between the tips of her fingers and finish it with sharp intakes of breath.
“There. Clean,” she said, flicking it out the window.
“Feel better?”
“No. But I will,” she said. “Give it a few minutes.” But he could feel it already, moving through him with his blood, relaxing and buoyant at the same time. He eased into it, letting his mind drift with the mist on the road.
“God,” Molly said, leaning back in her seat, “that dinner.” He said nothing, listening to another conversation inside his head.
“It’s interesting, the way he does it,” she said slowly.
“Does what?”
“Tells the story. It’s all there, isn’t it? All the way to Canada. Everything but the first stop.”
Nick let a minute pass, watching the road. “Were you close?”
“No, I never knew her. I mean, I must have known her, but I don’t remember. We never talked about it. You know, the one unforgivable sin.”
“But what was she like?”
“Well, let’s see. Also born Bronxville. She wanted to be a singer.”
“Really? An opera singer?”
“A band singer. You know, nightclubs and things. She had this picture-one of those professional pictures they put in delis? ”Best wishes to Mel.“ Like that. She’s got this big smile and a flower in her hair. All set, you know? I never heard that she actually sang anywhere, though. She probably just did it to freak out my grandparents. Nightclubs. I mean.”
“Pretty radical.”
“It was, in a way. She was always doing that. Of course, it wasn’t hard with them. My grandfather got on a train in the morning and walked through the door at six-twenty every day of his life. They wanted her to go to Manhattanville — where else? — and when she went to NYU there was this big fight, and the next thing you know she’s waiting tables for money and-do you really want to hear this?”
Nick nodded.
“Of course, I got most of this from my grandmother, so consider the source. She still blamed NYU, right to the end. All those ‘undesirable influences’-that was the phrase. Anyway, there was Aunt Rosemary, waiting tables and being influenced. Funny, isn’t it? In a way my grandmother was right. I mean, that must have been when she- became political.”
“Became a Communist, you mean,” Nick said, saying it.
“If she was. An actual Communist, in the party. They never said that.” She stopped. “Talk about splitting hairs.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then she dropped out of school and went to Washington. She was a secretary for a while, I think. During the war. And then-well, the rest you know.”
“Except we don’t.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I used to think about it, the way kids do. We had this box in the attic, you know, with the Mel picture in it, and I’d go through it, making up stories about her. Then I put the picture up in my room and my mother had a fit. I suppose she thought I’d turn out the same way.”
“What, a Communist?”
“No, man-crazy. She always thought that was the start of all the trouble.”
“What made her think that?”
“Oh, there’s always a man.” She waved her hand. “She had to tell herself something. The more she didn’t talk about what happened, the more it was there. You know when she told me? When they sent the suitcase back. The one she had in the hotel. I guess the police took it as evidence and then, months later, out of the blue, they delivered it and my mother had to explain it to me. She just sat there crying, and I guess that must have upset me, her crying, because that’s when she told me.”
“What was in it?”
“Nothing. You know, just overnight stuff-cosmetics, a nightgown. Nothing. It was the fact of it. And because they’d torn it all up. The lining was sliced-I guess they were looking for secret messages or something-and they never even apologized. She just sat on the couch with this beat-up bag and that was her sister, what was left of her, and-”
A nightgown, Nick thought. Planning to spend the night. A bag packed to meet someone.
“Anyway, that was Rosemary,” Molly said. “Public Enemy. Part of the Communist conspiracy. Remember that, in school? I thought they were talking about her. And I used to think, I know one but you don’t have to worry about her. She turned herself in.”
“Except she didn’t.”
“According to him.”
“But why would she?” Nick said, brooding. The others who talked, they were all tied up in the politics of it.
“You know, you lose one faith and you replace it with the opposite. And then the opposite has to destroy the first. They really did believe a conspiracy was threatening the country, because they used to believe in it themselves. So in some crazy way it was their duty to expose it, now that they were on the other side. But that doesn’t sound like her at all. Not from your description. How many nightclub singers have a problem with apostasy?”
She looked at him, the helpless beginning of a smile. “You know, I’ve never heard that word used before. In speech. Only in print. Is that how it’s pronounced?”
“You don’t want to talk about this.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe she had political convictions, I don’t know. What are they, anyway? What would you do to stop the war? Besides rallies and things. Suppose there was a way. What would you do? Name names? Maybe it wouldn’t seem like much if you really thought they were the enemy. Maybe you’re right-maybe she didn’t care about any of that. I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted a little attention. Anyway, she got it.” She paused. “While he was on his way to Canada.”
“You still think he’s lying.”
She said nothing, as if she had to think about it, then sat up and reached for a cigarette. “Yes.” He watched her light it, her movements stretched in time by the dope. “Now I know it.”
“How?”
“Remember that drive in the snow? All the little details. How he was dying for a smoke but he left his lighter behind?”
“So?”
“So they found it in the hotel room. That’s where he left it-it’s in the report. He still doesn’t know. I was watching. He probably still thinks he left it at home.” She turned to him. “He was there, Nick.”
“How do they know it was his?”
“They didn’t use these,” she said, indicating the disposable plastic lighter in her hand. “They had real lighters. With initials. W.K.”
“And O.K.,” he said softly.
She looked at him, puzzled.
“My mother. It was from her. She was always giving him stuff like that.” He stared at the road. “That still doesn’t mean he was there.”
“Have it your way. How else would it get there?”
“Somebody could have planted it.”
“Do you really think that’s likely?” she said quietly.
“No.” He remembered it in his father’s hand, shiny, always with him, like the wave in his hair.
