River of Heaven Read online

  So I tell Arthur. I tell him that he and Maddie are like oil and water right now—not a good mix. “I don’t believe that’s anything to be ashamed of,” I say. “That’s just the way families are sometimes.” If he wants, he can think I know nothing about what it is to be a family, but once upon a time I did. I could tell him, if I chose, that I know what it is to always feel this strain in the heart, this ache that he feels now. Instead, I say, “Anyone can see how much you love each other.”

  Maddie, who’s sitting on the couch chewing on her fingernails, spits one into her palm and says, “Ha!”

  “You see?” Arthur comes up from his chair and points a finger at her. “Sammy, do you see the thanks I get from this one?”

  “Why did you lie?” Maddie’s on her feet now, too. Her fingers curl into fists. “Why did you lie about Mom being dead?”

  Stump is barking.

  “Please,” I say. “Please, let’s calm down.”

  Arthur turns away and storms across the room to the library table in front of the picture window. He stands with his back to us, his head bowed. Maddie sinks back down on the couch.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you talk about,” Arthur finally says, and his voice is so low it seems to come from somewhere in the distance. “The thing that killed your mother. It’s not something to admit to people.”

  “It’s the truth,” Maddie says. “And it’s part of us, part of who we are.” She looks at me. “You see the problem?” Then she stands up and moves across the room to Arthur. She takes him by the shoulders and turns him so he has to face her. “Look at me,” she says. “Why can’t you just look at me, at us? Why can’t you admit how fucked up everything is?”

  “Don’t swear,” he says.

  “Fucked up,” Maddie says again. “That’s exactly what we are. We’re smack-dab in the middle of—‘Oh, no, Toto’—Fuckville. We could book ourselves on one of those slimy talk shows. Maury Povich, Jerry Springer.” She opens the thumb and pinky on her right hand and, keeping the other fingers curled, she pantomimes talking into a phone. “Hello, Maury, Hello, Jerry. It’s us.”

  Something about the way she says this last part—it’s us— grabs me by the throat. I can see from the way Arthur’s shoulders stiffen that he feels it as well. She says it with a catch in her voice as if she can barely stand to admit that we have the lives that we do. Though Arthur and Maddie don’t know this about me, I know it plain enough myself. Yes, I’m one of them. Yes, we’re the ones people look at and wonder how in the world we ever came to be who we are. Yes, it’s true. Yes, it’s us.

  Outside, it’s started to snow again. I can see the flakes drifting down past the streetlight, sticking to the sidewalks. It’s so quiet in my house I can hear the music from the city park, though I can’t make out the tune. Suddenly I feel a great tenderness for Maddie and Arthur, and, yes, even for me, because we’re ruined, and it’s Christmas Eve, and here we all are, together. Even though I’m embarrassed by how much we need, I’m not ashamed enough to stop myself from saying, “Arthur, listen to me. I think I have a solution, something to help you through this—what shall we call it—this rough passage?” I tell him that he and Maddie need time for the waters to calm. “It’s a stormy time,” I say. “The seas are rough.”

  “Can the sailing talk,” says Arthur. “Say it to me plain.”

  “The truth is.” I clear my throat, gather my breath. “The truth is Maddie would like to stay with me for a while.”

  “With you? Why would she want to stay with you?”

  I tell him how I found her in Stump’s house, hidden there because she felt she couldn’t be in Arthur’s home. “The two of you need time to get to know each other. With this arrangement you’ll both be right next door but not underfoot. You’ll have a place to go to let in some air. Like I said, even an idiot can see how much you mean to each other. You just need to go slow. You just need time. That’s what I’m offering.”

  “Is it true?” Arthur asks Maddie. “Is this what you want?”

  “Gramps,” she says, and for a moment I can see the little girl she was, trusting and eager to please, before the world got hold of her. “Just for a while. Please. It won’t be so bad. You’ll see.”

  “You won’t even come home with me tonight on Christmas Eve? Am I to be alone tonight?”

  “No, you don’t have to be alone.” Maddie takes his hand. “Here we are, the three of us.” Stump lets out a bark and a whine. “No, wait,” she says. “The four of us. You and me and Sam-You-Am and Stump the French sailor. Merry Christmas. Joyeux Noël! What more could we want?”

  My kitchen door opens, and in walks Cal. He stops, his hand still on the doorknob, looking through the archway to the living room, sizing up the situation: Arthur and Maddie and me, more people than he expected to find.

  “Cal,” I say. “You’re back.”

  “I went shopping,” he says. I notice, then, the blue plastic Wal-Mart bags in his hand. “Tomorrow’s Christmas.” He closes the door. He comes into the living room and sets the bags on the coffee table. Inside them are peanuts and chocolate drops and hard ribbon candy in wavy strips of red and white and green. The last bag he opens holds tangerines. He puts them out on the table. Tangerines like my father used to buy for Christmas back in the days when we were still a family. Cal tosses one to me, and I catch it. “I hope they’re good and juicy, Sammy,” he says. “I know you always liked them when Dad brought them home.” He hands me the last bag. “And here, this is for you.” I peek inside the bag and see a flannel shirt of green and black forest plaid. A shirt to keep me warm through winter. “I didn’t know what to get you,” he says, “but I thought you’d like what I’d like. After all, we’re brothers, right?”

  For an instant, it’s like we’re alone in the house, just the two of us speaking a private language. Maddie and Arthur must sense this. She clears her throat; he looks down at his feet. Both of them are shy now that Cal has come in and reminded us how blood, no matter if we want it to or not, runs to blood.

  I wonder how to break the news to Cal that Maddie will be living with us for a while. Am I an idiot? Of course I am. What was I thinking when I made this offer? There’s Cal and his Ruger Single Six, and now this map of downtown Chicago and whatever this is all adding up to. On top of that, I can’t predict what’s going to happen with Duncan and the way he’s got his nose on the trail of that night at the tracks when Dewey died. There’s a story there—forgive me for not being able to tell it just yet—that I wouldn’t want Maddie to know.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you,” I say to Cal.

  “Aw, Sammy. It’s better to give than to receive, right?” He turns toward Maddie and Arthur. His eyebrows rise slightly. “Arthur,” he says, “I don’t believe I’ve met this young lady.” I know he’s calculating his odds—this has become his life since the day he met Leonard Mink—trying to figure out whether Maddie is someone he can trust or whether she’ll have to go.

  “I’m Maddie,” she says. Then she does the most surprising thing. She steps forward and gives Cal a hug. He raises his arms, hesitating, not sure what to make of this affection from a stranger. Then he puts his arms around her shoulders, and they stand like that for a moment. I don’t know how it happens, but I can tell that they sense that they come from like cloth: two people, eager for someone to tell them they’re safe.

  “Maddie,” he says, and I can hear in his voice that she’s won him.

  11

  VERA CALLS TO MAKE SURE ARTHUR GOT TO MY HOUSE ALL right. “Just between you and me and the doorpost,” she says, “he had a little bit to drink.”

  I tell her yes, he got here just fine and we’ve had a good talk and we’ve decided some things. I’m in the kitchen on the phone, and Arthur and Cal and Maddie are in the living room, playing with Stump. I hear Maddie toss the rubber horseshoe and tell him, “Get it, get it boy, fetch.”

  “You two really hit it off,” Cal says to Maddie, and I can tell from the to
ne of his voice that he’s pleased.

  Even Arthur has something to say. “He’s a good dog, but good Lord, look at that sailor suit he’s wearing. We ought to make Sammy walk the plank for putting that on him.”

  Then everyone laughs, and why wouldn’t they? A basset hound in a French sailor’s suit, a rubber horseshoe hanging from his mouth.

  “Looks like he’s drunk on shore leave,” Arthur says, and the laughs get louder.

  I tell Vera that Maddie will be living here with me for a while. There’s a long silence. Then Vera says, “Isn’t your brother still there? Two old bachelors and a teenage girl? You know, Sam, people might talk.”

  “There’s no reason.”

  “Oh, there hardly ever is. Still, people in this town, well, you know.”

  I don’t want to think about people and the fools we are more often than not. Instead I want to linger on the image of Stump and that French sailor’s suit and that horseshoe; I want to listen to the har-de-har-har coming from my front room. I try to make my feelings as plain as I can to Vera. “I’ve spent years living too much inside my head. Just me and my dogs. Now there’s this girl, Maddie. Having her in my house means something to me, something I can hardly put into words. She lights things up. Just having her in the house tonight makes everything different.”

  “But what about Arthur? He lost his dear Bess and now this? Sam, do you really want to be in the way of him and Maddie? Don’t you think she should be living with him?”

  “Eventually she will.” I feel the truth of this slice through my heart. “I just mean to smooth the way. Provide a buffer zone so the two of them can get comfortable with each other. But sooner or later, well, of course, she’ll go back to Arthur. I know that, Vera. But for now…well, now is now. That’s as far as I can see.”

  Vera sighs. I hear ice cubes rattling in a glass, and I figure she’s having some Christmas Eve cheer of her own. “Have you thought as far as Christmas?” she wants to know. “You and your makeshift family? What will you do tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Just like I figured. You’ve got no idea, do you, Sam?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You’ll all come to my house for dinner. There, how about that, ducky?”

  “All of us?”

  “The whole gang. Now say good night. Very Vera needs to get very busy.”

  “But don’t you already have plans?”

  “Oh, ducky.” There’s a catch in her voice. “My daughter and her family live in Stockholm. Sweden for God’s sake. They haven’t been home in years. Please, come to dinner, the four of you. We find family where we can find it, yes? We’ll have a nice meal, and we’ll all feel…well, ducky, we’ll all feel a little less alone.”

  I wouldn’t have thought of Vera being lonely. After all, she’s Vera of Very Vera fame. I see her about town, always waving a hand to say hello to this person or that. Hello, Mr. Man Who Slices Meat in the Wal-Mart Deli. Good Morning, Miss Girlie Behind the Window at the Bank. Hello, to you and you and you. Hello. That’s Vera. And now here she is, stuck with us misfits for Christmas dinner.

  “Tomorrow,” I say.

  “Thank you, Sam. Until tomorrow.”

  Arthur’s on board right away. “Vera,” he says, “cooks like nobody’s business. Food from heaven. Not like the short-order fare old galley cooks like us slop together, right?”

  “Speak for yourself,” Cal says. He bristles, taking pride as he does in his culinary skills. “What time are we supposed to be there? Noon?” I nod, and I can see him calculating the time. “All right, then.” He slaps his hands together. “I’ve got to get into the kitchen and start rattling those pots and pans.”

  “What’s he talking about, Sammy?” Arthur wants to know.

  “You don’t think I’m showing up empty-handed, do you?” Cal gives Arthur a smirk. “And it won’t be galley fare, Mister Wisenheimer. No shit on a shingle, bub. Savvy?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer. He hits the kitchen, and I hear the refrigerator door swing open. Soon I hear him putting a pan on the stove, chopping something on the cutting board, then I smell onions sautéing and hear him singing something in Italian.

  Maddie takes some convincing. She’s sprawled on the couch, which will be her bed as long as Cal is still using the spare room. She’s watching a program on television—some sort of kooky game show where Japanese people wearing safety helmets try to do certain stunts and end up falling in a river. “That woman,” she says. “That Vera. She drives me ape.”

  I turn down the volume. “What is it about her you don’t like?”

  “She’s just so…so…” Maddie bites her lip trying to come up with the right word. “So…oh, I don’t know what she is, but I know I don’t like her.”

  “So perfect?”

  Maddie snaps her fingers. “That’s it. Yeah. Perfect.”

  “And there’s something wrong with that?” Arthur says.

  I hold up my hand, signaling him not to push this toward trouble.

  “She’s just so Martha,” Maddie says.

  “Stewart?” I ask, finishing the name of the renowned lifestyle guru.

  “Yeah, she’s the Martha Stewart of Podunk Town, Illinois.” Maddie puts on her Vera voice, soothing and musical. “Crocheting a toilet tissue cozy is as simple as snapping beans or dressing your favorite stone goose lawn ornament for the holidays.”

  “You shouldn’t make fun.”

  “Oh, please,” Maddie says. “Making fun is so much fun.” She clicks the remote control and the House and Garden Network comes on. A perky red-haired woman is telling us how to brighten dark rooms and give our lives more pizzazz. “You see?” Maddie says. “These people just want to remind us exactly how shitty we’ve got it. That’s what I don’t like about Vera.”

  ONCE ARTHUR HAS GONE HOME AND MADDIE HAS FALLEN asleep on the couch, I go into the kitchen, where Cal is running dishwater. Dirty mixing bowls and utensils litter the countertop. His creation—some sort of casserole with potatoes and onions—cools on the stove.

  I don’t know any other way to do this, but to put it to him straight out. “You want to explain this?” I say, and then I show him the map.

  He glances at it and bows his head over the sink. He plunges his hands into the dishwater; a few soap bubbles float up and drift awhile before they bump together and pop. “I don’t like you seeing that,” he finally says. “I mean it, Sammy. I’m ashamed.”

  “It’s Chicago,” I say. He still won’t look at me. He washes a bowl, dips it into the rinse water, and sets it in the drainer to dry. “It’s the Sears Tower.” I see him close his eyes for just an instant. He squeezes them shut as if he’s felt a pain in his head. “Who drew this map, Cal?”

  “Mink,” he says in a whisper. “That night we were drinking at the VFW.”

  “Cal?” I say, afraid of where this may be heading.

  He looks at me, and I can see the tears welling up in his eyes. “Mink drew it when he was telling me how it would all happen. ‘You better believe me, buddy,’ he said. ‘This is the real deal.’ I told him, hell, yeah, I knew it. Remember, I was drunk, Sammy. I was talking out of my head. Mink finished his Wild Turkey and got up to leave. ‘Your map,’ I said to him, and he told me to keep it. ‘Souvenir,’ he said. Cal wipes at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Sammy, I sobered up the next morning, and I saw that map, and I got scared to death.”

  “How come you kept it?”

  “I thought if all hell broke loose in Chicago, I’d have that map, and I’d be able to go to the police and tell them all about Leonard Mink.”

  “But wouldn’t they suspect you were part of it?”

  “It’s Mink’s handwriting. Not mine.”

  “So did you tell the police all this after Mink was dead?”

  “I couldn’t.” I wait for Cal to tell me more, but he doesn’t.

  “Trust me, Sammy, by that time, I couldn’t say a word. I just let the police think what they wanted to think,
that I was a hero, and then I got the hell out of town.”

  “What about this address?” I show him the back of the paper where at some time he wrote 5214 Larkspur Lane. “Is that somewhere in Chicago?”

  “No, not Chicago. That address doesn’t have anything to do with Mink or Zwilling or Chicago.” He dries his hands on a dish towel. “I wrote that address down so I wouldn’t forget it. If trouble comes and I have to run, there’s something I want to make sure I take care of, and that’s the place I’ll need to go to see to things.”

  “Where is it, Cal? What city?”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t want to know that. Trust me, Sammy. If the shit hits the fan, I don’t want any of it getting on you.”

  I understand that he’s trying to protect me. I’ve reached the point where I’m afraid to know more—this story threatens to run to places too frightening to consider—so I don’t press him about the address. When he motions for me to follow him, I do.

  We go out into the living room, taking care, I notice, to be as quiet with our steps as we can, so we won’t wake Maddie. She sleeps on her side with her hands folded under her cheek, the way I imagine people do when they lie down to rest in heaven. I notice, too, that for a moment Cal and I both stop and watch her, the way fathers must when they look in on their children at night. I’m seized with how, for just this instant, everything else has fallen away and all that matters is the fact that Maddie is here with us, that we now have this girl to watch over.

  I take a step, meaning to move on down the hall, but Cal grabs hold of my arm and stops me.

  He goes to the couch, bends over, and with great care, he pulls the blanket up over Maddie’s shoulders, so she won’t feel the cold and stir from sleep.

  I’m grateful that I’m here to see this, my brother’s tender concern. I want to linger inside it, but, of course, time is marching on ahead of us, and soon, I know, Cal will turn away from Maddie, and I’ll follow him.

  He moves down the hall, and together we go into his bedroom. He closes the door. Then he opens the closet and finds his duffel bag. He reaches his hand down inside it and takes out a manila envelope, wrinkled and soft with wear, one of those oversized envelopes, bigger than a piece of paper, the flap held with a metal clasp.