“Do you know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?” Erin said.
“Don’t even know Maslow,” I said.
“Maslow’s studies indicate that humans have a descending order of fundamental needs: physical fulfillment, food, warmth, that sort of thing; then safety, love, and belonging; and self-esteem. Whoever-or whatever-provides for those needs will command loyalty and love.”
“Which the gangs do.”
“Yes,” Erin said. “They do.”
Again we were quiet. Erin finished her whiskey and held her glass out. I poured her another drink. Me too.
“There’s even a girls’ gang,” Erin said. “Really vicious, hostile.”
“I will make no remark about the female of the species,” I said.
“Ghetto life is sexist in the extreme,” Erin said. “Among the gangs, women are second-class citizens. Good for sex and little else. Maybe it has to do with a matriarchal society. Maybe all sexism does-the struggle between son and mother over son’s freedom. I have no theories on it-I have no theories on anything. I haven’t time.”
She drank again and seemed lost for a moment in thoughts I had no access to.
“You were talking about a female gang,” I said.
Erin shook her head, half smiling. “The Crockettes. More macho than anyone. One of the girls, name was Whistle, I don’t know why, stabbed her mother and put out a contract on her stepfather.”
“And then demanded leniency because she was an orphan.”
“It is almost like a joke, isn’t it?” Erin said. “She paid off the contract with sex. Even in the toughest of female gangs, that’s their edge, they pay for what they want by fucking.”
Erin’s voice was hard. I knew she’d chosen the word carefully.
“So finally, no matter what else they do, they perpetuate their status,” I said.
Erin nodded slowly, gazing past me at the dark vertical rain.
“The only thing that can save them, boys or girls, the only thing that works,” she said, “is if they can get some sort of positive relationship with an adult. They have no role models, nobody to demonstrate a way of life better than the one they’re in… or the church. I know it sounds silly, but if these kids get religion, they have something. The Muslims have saved a lot.”
“Another kind of gang.”
“Sure-Muslims, Baptists, the Marine Corps. Anybody, anything that can provide for Maslow’s hierarchy, that can show them that they are part of something, that they matter.”
She was leaning forward in her chair, the whiskey held in two hands in her lap and forgotten. I raised my glass toward her and gestured and took a drink.
“What I hope for you, Sister Macklin, is that you never lose this… but you get something else too.”
She smiled at me.
“That would be nice,” she said.
CHAPTER 31
I got home just after Susan’s last patient had departed. Susan was on the phone. Which she was a lot. She knew more people than Ivana Trump, and she talked to all of them, nearly every day, after work. Pearl was eating some dry dog food mixed with water in the kitchen and was profoundly ambivalent whether to greet me or keep eating. She made one fast dash at me and then returned to her supper. But she wagged her tail vigorously as she ate. Good enough. Susan waved at me but stayed on the phone. I didn’t mind. I liked listening to her talk on the phone. It was a performance-animated, intimate, compelling, rich with overtones, radiant with interest. I didn’t even know to whom she was talking, or about what. I just liked the sound of it, the way I like the sound of music.
I got a pork tenderloin out and brushed it with honey and sprinkled it with rosemary and put it in the oven. While it roasted I mixed up some corn flour biscuits and let them sit while I tossed a salad of white beans and peppers and doused it with some olive oil and cilantro. When the pork was done I took it out and let it rest while I baked the biscuits. I put some boysenberry jam out to have with the biscuits and sat down to eat.
I had already put away a biscuit when Susan hung up the phone and walked across the kitchen and gave me a kiss. She pursed her lips slightly and then nodded.
“Boysenberry,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“We got it last fall at that stand in Belfast, Maine.”
“Sensitive palate and good memory,” I said.
“And great kisser?”
“Everyone says so,” I said. “You want a little supper?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“I’ll have something later,” she said. “I still have to go to the club.”
“Aerobics?”
“Yes. I’m taking a step class and then I’ll probably do some weights. You eat much too early for me.”
