Anything to avoid thinking about what had happened. What happened, she thought. As though what happened could be grouped with falling meteors, or passengers on planes flown into buildings. Every step of the way you were here, she thought, watching her feet. Making up your mind. Just the way Teresa Sweeney made up hers.
“Do you have a lead yet for your article?” he asked.
“I gave up on it this morning,” she said. “But yesterday I was thinking of tile. Tile and nostalgia.”
“I’m all ears.”
Brenda closed her eyes and opened them. I’m all ears was a Charlieism. So was worse for wear.
“Everywhere the realtor took me, tile was a big deal,” she said. “I have never thought about tile in my life. Tile or Montgomery Ward.”
“Ward went belly up years ago,” Sweeney told her.
“Yesterday, one of the salesmen I met had worked for Ward,” she said. “A nice senior citizen from St. Paul. He rode us around in a golf cart to look at condos.”
Sweeney raised her hand and kissed it as they scuffed over the coarse grass. “You just love us old guys,” he said.
“Patrick—”
“There’s no need,” he said. “It was plain wonderful, but don’t worry about the phone ringing. That’s a promise.”
“Thank you.”
She felt relieved, but this was the easy part. The hard part would come later. You will have to tell him, Brenda thought. The certainty of it caught her, that she would keep calling Charlie until he picked up the phone. Please come here, she’d say. And if he wouldn’t, she would go to him.
Picnic litter was visible ahead. It was like real life to her, and the disorder made Brenda feel stupid. Clean break, she thought. All her life, that had been her approach to intimacy. Her grown-up, real-world approach to staying safe. There’s not going to be any clean break, she thought. Now, she wanted no break at all. She thought that having sex with Pat Sweeney had to do with gratitude. Sympathy. And with the sense of release that followed her telling him her story. From the age of thirteen, she had never cared for anyone so much. Charlie Schmidt had seemed too good to be true, so how could she be worthy of him? But if they were to have a chance, she would have to tell him. And he would have to forgive her.
“I wish I’d seen you in action with all those legislators,” she said.
“I was poetry in motion.”
They reached the house. Very quickly she straightened up inside. When she stepped from the bathroom, he was waiting to walk her to her car. Outside, she used the keyless-entry button, and he opened her door. She got in, and Sweeney slammed it as she started the engine. She put the car in gear and looked up through the glass. He patted the roof to release her, and stepped back.
Chester Ivy’s brightly lighted bedroom still held the sour smell of surgical rubber and bottled oxygen. A stripped hospital bed with motorized lift and side rails extended from the outer wall.
Rivera looked up. Some of the pictures Ellen Ivy had painted were small, others large. She had died before All Hands on Deck, but Rivera knew from her husband just how important painting had been to her.
The bird hanging over the bed looked to be the same size as the 5 picture. He hopped up and lifted the frame free of the hook. Back down, he carried the picture out and down the hall. The bird was a toucan, black with brilliant colors on the wings and bill. Ellen Ivy had posed it standing on the hood of a shiny pink-and-white Chevrolet Impala.
In the great room, he rested the frame against the console, then looked out at the deck. He crossed and cupped the glass. On the far side of the fairway, twin beams formed an arc of light. People sometimes had parties. He stepped away and pressed the button to close the curtains.
Once they had tracked shut, Rivera moved back to the heavy console and kicked off his boat shoes. He jumped up and lifted down the Jasper Johns lithograph. He leaned it against the wall, got the toucan, hung it carefully, straightened it. He liked it. Toucans lived in southern Mexico. Riding with him in the truck to Cozumel, along with crates of bookends and fake Mayan statues, had been boxes of small ceramic Toucan and parrot souvenirs.
Rivera jumped down, worked into his shoes, and carried his 5 picture to the front entrance. He retraced his steps and turned off the light in Ivy’s bedroom. The curtains had been open when he came, and things should be left the same. He returned to the front, turned off lights, and pushed the button.
Once the curtains were open, he moved through darkness and took up his picture. He stepped outside, clicked shut the door, and moved along the circular drive. The picture measured about two feet square. It would easily fit lying flat in the van’s cargo area.
“Hello, James.”
“Hello.” He said it naturally, turning with the lithograph.
“Did I surprise you?”
“You did, that’s a fact, sir, you sure did.” It was the man from Friday. The one with the redhead. “Mr. Sweeney, right?”
He lowered the frame and held out his hand. Sweeney shook it slowly, looking down at the picture. “Mr. Ivy was a client,” Rivera said. “He passed away the same day you flew in.” Sweeney let go. “The family asked me to see to some things.”
“What happened?”
Sweeney sounded suspicious. “An accident,” Rivera said. “Our attendant was with him the whole time. He went inside to bring out lunch, it happened that quick. He was a very fine old gentleman.”
“Right.” Sweeney was still looking down at the picture. “I didn’t know him,” he said. “How exactly did
