Killer Smile

Beyond the station was a large plastic window, and she could see her parents being led out by Detective Gomez and his partner.

Excellent. Down the hall to her right was a single white exit door, beside a sign that read RADIOLOGY. Presumably it was another way out of the emergency department and would get Mary back to the hospital, where she could find her way to the main entrance by the time Judy scored a new wardrobe.

She snuck out of the room and made a beeline for the door. She almost had her hand on the doorknob when she heard a noise behind her.

And she turned.

Forty-Five

“MARE!” It was her father, hailing her with a smile. “YOU’RE GOIN’ THE WRONG WAY! WE’RE OUT FRONT!”

Busted again. “Dad, Jeez. Oh. Right.”

“HOLD ON A MINUTE, I FORGOT MY LUCKY CAP. SEE, IT WORKED GOOD TONIGHT, DIDN’T IT?” He gestured at the door to the examining room, where his grimy tan cabbie hat hung on the doorknob. His lucky cap, easily older than she was, was the only dirty article of clothing in the house, because her father refused to let her mother wash the luck out. Mary had long ago forgotten why it was lucky, but she realized that he had worn it tonight for her. Her father plucked the cap from the doorknob and flopped his cap on his head, where it landed a little off center. “MARE, IT’S THIS WAY, THE EXIT!”

“Pop, I know, I just -”

“HOLD ON TO ME SO YOU DON’T FALL OVER.” He shuffled to her and offered her his arm, bunchy at the elbow, where his brown car coat wrinkled in its worsted way.

Mary stopped, struck. It was just the way he always offered his arm, down the shore, when they were about to walk the boardwalk to get soft ice cream. Or when they were about to walk down the aisle, on her wedding day. Or at Mike’s funeral. Now, he offered it to steady her. Pick her up. Retrieve her. Help her. He had always been there, offering his arm. When she was little, it was practice, and later, it was support. That arm was the greatest gift a father can give a daughter, and he gave it to her, without question, and always. Suddenly his arm sank slowly, his expression bewildered.

“WHAT? WHAT’SA MATTER? LET’S GO! YOUR MOTHER’S IN THE COP CAR, WAITIN’!”

“Pop, there’s something I have to do tomorrow, on the Saracone case.” Mary collected herself. “I was gonna meet Judy out front and have her drop me off at a hotel or something. If I come home tonight, you and Mom will never let me do it.”

“WHA’?” Her father blinked, then understood. She saw the realization creep over him, and his gaze traveled from her to the exit door and back again. “You were sneakin’ away from us?” he asked, his voice incredulous, his tone a fresh wound.

“I had to. I have to.”

“I’m surprised at you, Mare.” His brown eyes went round. “I can’t believe you would do that.”

“I’m sorry, Pop.” Sorrysorrysorry. “But I have no choice.”

“Yes, you do.” His forehead wrinkled with the only disapproval she had ever seen on his face. “Lemme ask you somethin.’ Were you doin’ somethin’ wrong?”

“No. I’m doing something I have to do.”

“Then why you hidin’ it?”

Mary didn’t have an immediate answer.

“You don’t sneak. You never sneak.” Her father pointed a thick finger at her, and his eyes flashed. “You have to do somethin’ tomorrow? Then, when the time comes, you stand up straight and you talk to us.”

“But, Pop, Mom’ll never go for it.”

“You show your mother the respect she deserves. You talk to her. Tomorrow. But tonight, you come home and sleep.” He sighed, his heavy shoulders letting down. “You’re sick and you shouldn’t be runnin’ around, Mare. I signed the paper for you, they gave me the pills for your head. You gotta rest. Tonight you stay home.”

Mary felt a tsunami of guilt wash over her. She would rather be locked in a trunk than this. And what were the odds she’d get out of her parents’ house tomorrow morning? She’d have to defy not only her father, but also her mother, who still looked so thin. Mary seized the moment. “Pop, what’s the matter with Mom?”

“That’s not for now. That’s for later. For her and you.” His face softened, falling into familiar sad lines. “Come on, Mare. You don’t want it to be this way. You were such a good girl, never snuck around. I heard the stories about the other girls at school, but not my Mary. Never you.” He offered his arm again. “Come on, let’s go home.”

How much longer will I have that arm to hold on to? And what about Mom? Mary took his arm, appreciating its gift anew. “You win, Pop.”

“Of course.” Her father smiled. “Judy in the getaway car?”

“She’s my wheelman.”

They both laughed, and shuffled out together.

It wasn’t until later, when she was putting fresh sheets on her childhood bed, that Mary got her mother alone. At least, alone except for the press outside, crowding tiny Mercer Street with their videocameras, klieglights, and microphones, waiting for Mary to come out. Earlier, Mrs. DiTonio had shooed them from the block with her trusty BackSaver snow shovel, but they’d come back in force, knowing Mary would have to come out sometime. But not tonight. Tonight was for family.

She and her mother were in the stop-time bedroom Mary had shared with her sister. Two single beds sat against the side wall, and between the front windows, a small white-painted bookshelf crammed with the artifacts of an American girlhood; stuffed Easter bunnies with legs that had inexplicably hardened like concrete; a chubby Latin-English dictionary, soft, blue hatch-marked copies of Nancy Drew, and random Archie comics; brown teddy bears with dilated pupils, eyelashes that stuck together and black noses that never wore off, and a mass grave of half-nude Barbies stacked on a shelf, so that only their stiff plastic feet showed. There was only a single desk that nobody used anyway, now cleaner than it ever had been, and above it hung a cork bulletin board cluttered with wrinkled track ribbons, photo-booth strips of girlfriends with matching braces, sewn felt letters in school colors for honors in English and religion, pointless sayings cut out of advertisements (“Slicker All Over. Yardley of London.”), and a curling Time magazine cover of the Prince of Wales by Peter Max.

Between the beds stood a single wooden night table, and on it rested a plastic Flintstones lamp that nobody had the heart to discard, even when it went well beyond outgrown into campy and back again. Its yellowed paper shade had pictures of Pebbles and Bam-Bam, and its base was outdated enough to permit only a forty-watt bulb, which barely illuminated the room but emitted a soft, friendly, old-feeling glow. It bathed Vita DiNunzio’s newly pale face with warmth, magically filling the hollows that had appeared in her cheeks.

“You got?” her mother asked, in her shorthand. She had both hands on her side of the sheet, wanting to know if Mary was ready with her side, and she didn’t need to say more. Mary had made so many beds with her that she could do both sides of most of their conversations. But not the one they were about to have.

“I got it, Ma,” Mary said, and they flipped the white flat sheet into the air, releasing a stored-up scent of mothballs, hard soap, and city air. The sheet would have been line-dried outside, on a clothesline less imaginative than Amadeo’s, but equally useful. The sheet caught the air, making a momentary cloud between them, before it billowed soft to the bed. “So, Ma, tell me what’s the matter with you.”

“Nothing.” Nut-ting-eh, it came out.

“Something’s wrong, Ma. You’re thin, I can see that. Tell me.”

“I’m fine.”

“Ma, you’re making my head hurt more.” Mary sat on the bed, refusing to make her hospital corner. “Tell me. I’m ready. I can handle it, whatever it is. We can handle it together.” Her words rang with an authority unusual for Mary, and she realized she couldn’t even have faked that tone before.

Her mother remained silent as she folded her corner, her lips forming a tight line. She smoothed out the sheet with the flat of each hand in brisk, practiced strokes, and in no time, her side of the bed was completely made and