okay?”
Bennie nodded. The Soapy Pony clenched in her hand made a hard fist. “How much do I owe you for the soap?”
“You needn’t. It’s only a dollar.”
“No, I insist. And… I want the books, too.”
“Which ones?” Janet asked.
Bennie turned and scanned the titles.
“You’re a horse lover.”
“No,” Bennie answered, and turned away.
It wasn’t until Bennie reached the Tinicum exit ten minutes from the Center City that she became aware of a thought. She had driven for an hour to get back to Philly, yet she couldn’t remember a thing. Had her head gone blank for sixty miles? It didn’t seem possible. She had steered the Saab onto I-95, shifted gears and accelerated properly, and had seen cars, trucks, hotels, strip malls. Roadside lights had blurred as she’d whizzed past them; neon signs, lighted billboards, lights illuminating exit signs, red taillights flashing on and off, all of them bright holes puncturing the blackest of nights, like stars punched into the sky. She had seen these things and somehow she had made it home, but she couldn’t remember how this had happened exactly.
The Saab sped forward as if it were driving itself, turned on its blinkers and switched into the correct lane for the exit off of I-95, and headed into the oldest part of town, then turned north, straight toward the Fairmount section. The tight turn shifted the books in their box on the backseat, but Bennie didn’t notice the sound. She didn’t think about the fact that her father was dead. That she wouldn’t be able to mourn him. That she had missed his funeral and didn’t even know where he was buried.
She wiped unexpected wetness from her eyes and swung the Saab onto the parkway, between the line of the amber lights limning the broad Ben Franklin Parkway, its asphalt slick with a rain past. A bright red traffic light burned into the night, but Bennie saw its blazing only blurrily, even though she wasn’t whizzing past anything, but was stopped there, rolled to a halt at a light and shifted out of gear. It was then that she realized that her mother and her father had died of the same thing. Their hearts had failed; hers from being used too much. And his, too little.
Bennie hit her house lonely, quiet, and depressed, an array of human emotions evidently lost on golden retrievers. Or at least, Bear. He threw himself on her chest the moment she came in the backdoor, licking her face the way he did every day and almost stripping her of the box of books. She told Bear the usual forty-four times to
“Yo, what happened to that legendary intuition of the canine? You’re supposed to gauge my mood, then try to comfort me. Don’t you watch Animal Planet?”
Bear plopped his furry butt on the floor and pawed at the air until Bennie settled him by scratching the bozo hair behind his ear. The dog pressed his head against her palm in a way that told her the yeast infection had returned to his
“Aha, tricked you yet again!” she said with complete satisfaction, plucking aside a rattling bottle of Excedrin and a thin box of heartworm medicine until she located the crimped tube of Panalog. She twisted off the red cap one-handed and squirted a wiggly line of goop into the dog’s raggedy ears, then closed and massaged each in turn, holding on to his collar while he wriggled to save face.
“Poor baby, hang in there.” She put the crumpled tube back on the counter, and he picked up his ball again and let it drop at her feet, where it bounced and rolled to a stop, as if on cue.
“Nice move,” she said with a smile, and when she bent down to retrieve the ball for her thrilled retriever, realized his secret plan. Bear wasn’t the kind of dog who sniffed out your lousy mood and shared it; he was the kind of dog who ignored your lousy mood until you surrendered to join his, which was uniformly and consistently terrific. Bennie stroked his soft nose, just beginning to gray, shot through now with tiny spears of dull silver, and she bent down and kissed him on the muzzle more times than she would have in public. Then she whispered to him that she loved him, and when she straightened back up again, she didn’t feel like crying anymore. Nor did she feel like cleaning up.
She felt like figuring things out.
Ten minutes later, she was hoisting the box of books onto the tiny kitchen table, covered with paper napkins taken from their ceramic holder and a grainy pile of sugar dumped from a matching bowl. She tore into the books, taking the top one.
Bennie flipped though the book. Glossy pictures of people jumping things on even glossier horses. Nothing to tell her anything about her father. No secret notes stuck inside, no receipts from stores, no photos or papers of any kind. She went to the next book,
After the whole box had been emptied and all the books gone through, she still hadn’t found anything. She considered that then, with the books lying open on the table. In the back of her mind, she’d always understood that her father was terribly unfinished business in her life, and she’d always thought she’d get back to Delaware when she was ready to deal with him. There was so much she’d wanted to know, about his life, about his decisions, and his acts. And now about Alice.
But as it happened, he couldn’t wait for Bennie. Death had intervened, not impatient, merely inevitable. It hadn’t known of her intentions and plans, inchoate and well-meaning. It had taken her father on a schedule all its own, denying her her answers, conclusions, and explanations. Some families died with their mysteries still, and Bennie’s would be one of those. And though she had lost the chance to know her father, she still felt grief at his passing. Which was the biggest mystery of all.
She considered that, too, letting it lie in her heart for a minute longer, giving him that much due and no more. Then she closed the book.
And went to clean up her house.
13
The next morning found Bennie in her office at seven o’clock. It had taken her until late to get the house back in order and she hadn’t slept much, but with adrenaline and caffeine she was coming around. Marshall and the associates had put the offices back together after the police search, hard work which wasn’t in anybody’s job description. And for that Bennie felt responsible.
A pale ray of sunlight shone translucent through her window, too weak to warm her, glaring off the hard finish of the papers cluttering her desk. She normally loved to work early in the morning, but she was feeling wretched this morning. She had lost a father she’d never known. It left her feeling oddly restless, and had implications for the present. If the Rices didn’t call her, she’d have to find another way to get to Alice. But for the time being she had to concentrate.
Today was the day of fighting back, on all fronts. First, fighting Alice. No way could Alice dress like her today. Bennie had retired the khaki uniform that was too easy to copy, and this morning she was wearing a bright red suit she’d bought on sale at Ann Taylor but had never worn because the color was too Nancy Reagan. Its short jacket cinched in at the waist, and its skirt was high enough to have locked Bennie into shaving above her knees.
