still even and conversational.
'You and your father ever talk about that?'
'Protecting my mother? No. It was an unspoken agreement. We'd pretend she wasn't phobic. We'd agree that she was `nervous' and that we didn't want to `upset her.' But the agreement was silent. We never spoke of it. We never, in my memory, spoke of anything.'
'Nothing?'
'Nothing of substance. He'd ask me how I liked school, or tell me what a pretty dress I had on. That sort of thing. But an actual conversation-I can't remember one.'
'So the only parent you had was your mother and she was jealous of you. Did she love you too?'
'I think so. I know that I was ashamed of her. She was older than other kids' mothers, and she was really square. And I know I hated her for being so'-Susan smiled sadly-'nervous. But however bitchy she was, I knew she loved me. And she was always there. I trusted her, as much as I despised her. She was the one who took care of me.'
'And she had her problems,' I said.
'Yes,' Susan said, 'she had many and they were probably deep seated and my father was probably one of them.'
'He fool around?' I said.
'I have no idea,' Susan said. 'I spent a lot of time with him, but I can't express to you how much I didn't know my father.'
From the Harvard Boat House to the Larz Anderson Bridge is uphill. You never notice it driving along Soldier's Field Road. It's not very dramatic, but if it marks the last stretch of a four-mile run, it becomes more apparent.
'Well, dysfunctional or not,' I said, 'they produced a hell of a daughter.'
'A bit dysfunctional herself.'
'You think?'
'Not easy to live with,' Susan said.
'Impossible to live with,' I said. 'But what we do works out pretty good.'
'Just pretty good?'
'Masculine understatement,' I said.
'Oh that,' she said.
We went up the little hill and turned left across the Anderson Bridge, where I had almost died last year.
'I am being a bitch,' Susan said, 'about Brad Sterling.'
'Yes.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I know.'
'I don't know if I can promise not to be again.'
'I know.'
'Nothing breaks you, does it,' Susan said. 'Nothing makes you swerve.'
'For crissake, Suze, I love you,' I said. 'I plan to continue.'
'If I weren't so ladylike,' she said, 'I might cry.'
'Isn't it sort of unladylike, anyway, to sweat like you do?' I said.
'Hey,' Susan said. 'Unlady-like this!'
'Of course,' I said. 'How could I have been so wrong.'
chapter nineteen
HAWK CAME INTO my office wearing a blue blazer and white trousers.
'Been yachting?' I said.
'Ah is in disguise,' Hawk said. `'The Marblehead look. Blend right in.'
'Boy, you certainly fooled me,' I said. 'How'd it work?'
Hawk shrugged.
'Been outside the Ronan place maybe an hour when two hard cases come along.'
'Cops?'
'Naw. Tough guys. A tall fat one, and a short one with muscles, no neck that I could see.'
'Well, well,' I said.
'Sound familiar?'
I nodded. 'What did they say?'
