Conor gulped down his beer and set the glass on the bar. “Did I say that right?”
“I’m like Ellen,” Poole said. “I like listening to you talk.”
2
A little while later Poole too went to the telephone, thinking that it was not so very different for him. During their time in Singapore and Bangkok, everything had seemed very sharp and clear—he had been reminded of what it had been like in Vietnam. But in a short time everything had switched around. Singapore and Bangkok felt like peacetime, and what was around him now felt like Vietnam. Another version of Elvis was following them. Like Conor, Poole had not thought that he was asleep and dreaming when he had walked through the Tiger Balm Gardens and Bugis Street; but maybe his first moment of real awakening had come on the rickety bridge beside the cardboard shacks. That was where he had started to give things up.
He dropped in coins and dialed his wife’s number. He expected to hear her message, but someone lifted the receiver after the first ring.
Silence.
“Hello, who is this?” he asked.
“Who is
Then he knew who it was. “Hello, Pat. This is Michael. I’d like to speak to Judy.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Please.” Poole waited for long minutes while he watched Conor look at the door whenever someone walked in. He would have to leave Conor’s apartment and check into a hotel that night—it was not fair to keep him from his girlfriend.
Pat’s mild voice came back on the line. “She won’t, Michael. I’m sorry. She just won’t talk to you.”
“Try again. Please.”
“One more try,” she said.
This time Judy came to the telephone almost immediately.
“Don’t you think we ought to get together and talk about things?”
“I’m not under the impression we have anything to talk about,” Judy said.
“We have a lot to talk about. Do you really want the lawyers to take over?”
“Just stay away from here,” Judy said. “I don’t want to see you, I don’t want you sleeping on the couch, and I don’t want to talk to you now.”
It was all a game—sooner or later Judy would want everything back the way it used to be. For now she wanted him to suffer. He had kept her from doing something she had been pretending with all her heart to want to do.
“Have it your way,” he said, but she had already hung up.
Poole wandered back to the bar. Conor took one look at him and said, “Hey man, Ellen and me can always stay at her place, you know. The only reason we use mine is that she lives over in Bethel and it’d take me a little longer to get to work, but the real main reason is that Woyzak’s got all his stuff all over the walls, pictures of himself in uniform and a bunch of medals all framed, everywhere you look there’s Tom Woyzak sighting down on you. It gets to you after a while.”
Poole excused himself and went back to the telephone. By now the bar was full of people, and he could barely hear the mechanical voice instructing him in the use of his credit card.
A man answered, asked for his name, and said that he would bring Maggie to the telephone. He sounded very paternal.
In a moment Maggie was on the line. “Well, well, Dr. Poole. How did you know I wanted to talk to you?”
“I have an idea that might be interesting to you.”
“Sounds interesting already,” she said.
“Has Tim Underhill mentioned our trip to Milwaukee to you?”
He had not.
“It hasn’t been too definite yet. We’re going to look up Victor Spitalny’s parents and spend a little time seeing if we can pick up some new information on him. He might have sent a postcard, there might be someone who’s heard something—it’s a long shot, but it’s worth trying.”
“And?”
“And I thought that maybe you should come along. You might be able to identify Spitalny from a photograph. And you’re a part of what’s going on. You’re already involved.”
“When will you be going?”
Michael said that he would book tickets that night for Sunday, and that he expected to be gone only a couple of days.
“We’re opening the restaurant in a week.”
“It might only take a day or two. We might find out that it’s just a cold trail.”
“So why should I come along?”
“I’d like you to,” Michael said.
“Then I will. Call me back with the flight times, and I’ll meet you at the airport. I’ll give you a check for my ticket.”
Michael hung up smiling.
He turned to face the bar and saw Conor standing face to face with a woman who was perhaps an inch taller than he. She had long, unruly brown hair and wore a plaid shirt, a tan sleeveless down jacket, and tight faded jeans. Conor nodded in his direction, and the woman turned to watch him approach them. She had a high, deeply lined forehead, firm eyebrows, and a strong intelligent face. She was not at all what Michael had expected.
“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Conor said. “Dr. Michael Poole, known as Mike. This is Ellen.”
“Hello, Dr. Poole.” She gripped his hand in hers.
“I hope you’ll call me Michael,” he said. “I’ve been hearing about you too, and I’m glad to meet you.”
“I had to get away for a little while so I could check up on my sweetie,” Ellen said.
“If you guys ever have babies, you’d better ask me to be their doctor,” Poole said, and for a time they all stood in the noisy bar grinning at each other.
3
When Michael slid into the last pew at St. Robert’s on the village square the service had already begun. Two pews near the front had been filled with children who must have been Stacy’s classmates. All of them looked taller, older, and at once more worldly and more innocent than she. Stacy’s parents, William and Mary, “like the college,” they said to those who met them for the first time, sat with a small group of relatives on the other side of the church. William turned around and gave Michael a grateful glance as he sat down. Light streamed in through the stained glass windows on both sides of the church. Michael felt like a ghost—he felt as if bit by bit he were becoming invisible, sitting in the bright optimistic church as an Episcopalian priest uttered heartfelt commonplaces about death.
He and the Talbots met at the church door at the end of the service. William Talbot was a beefy good- hearted man who had made a fortune with various investment banking firms. “I’m happy you came, Michael.”
“We heard you’re leaving your practice.” There was a question in Mary Talbot’s statement, and Michael thought he heard a criticism too. In the world of Westerholm, doctors were not supposed to leave their posts until they retired or dropped dead.
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Are you coming out to Memorial Park?”
Mary Talbot had begun to look oddly worried and doubtful.
“Of course,” Michael said.
There were two cemeteries in Westerholm, located at opposite ends of the town. The older of the two, Burr Grove, had filled up shortly before World War II, and was a leafy, hilly, shady place with rows of pitted old eighteenth-century tombstones. Burr Grove was known locally as “the graveyard.” Memorial Park, a straightforward modern cemetery, occupied a long level field bordered by woods near the expressway on the north end of town. It was neat, very well tended, and without charm or character of any kind. In Memorial Park there were no tilting tombstones, no statuary of angels or dogs or wailing women with dripping hair, no stone bungalows testifying to
