His sly smile, dropped only at the onset of the attack, returns. My father loosens his grip on the old man's neck.
I was merely admiring the coin, the old man says. A very rare twenty-dollar piece. Saint Gaudens. 1907. Ultra-high proof. The most beautiful American coin ever minted. Only twenty-four were struck, twenty remain in private hands. I own four. He looks beyond my father at the girl. You always had exquisite taste, he says.
I was well taught, she says.
Do you mind, the old man says to my father, tapping lightly on my father's wrist.
My father is puzzled at the calmness of the conversation. There is no shock on the old man's face at seeing the two of them in his treasure room, no threats of arrest from the old man, no howls of abuse from her. A brittle civility holds sway. He lets the old man go, steps back, slinks into the corner, subdued as much by the old man's accent as by the actual nature of the relationship playing out before him. Whatever has gone on in this house, he realizes, she has not told him the half of it. And whatever is to come, the old man's accent has marked with utter clarity their respective positions in the world, the old man's and my father's, has shown all the old man can offer to this girl and all that my father never could.
My father's voice as he recounted the scene to me was faint, barely discernible through the oxygen mask and beneath the rasp of his breath. His blood oxygen level couldn't fight its way above eighty-seven percent and his respiratory rate was in the mid-twenties. He was weaker than I had ever before seen him in his life. Nothing was working, the new drug wasn't working, death was coming, and he was struggling mightily to beat the scythe as he told me the story. He didn't have the strength to set the scene, to lay in all the details, so I was forced to do that for myself, but by now I had been so captured by the story, and by his burning desire to tell it, that it was not a burden to listen to his faint words and provide for myself the details of the conversation between the old man and the girl my father loved.
I knew you'd come back, the old man says.
Just for what I'm owed, she says.
And what do you believe is that, dear girl?
She gazes around the room, her eyes full of light. She scans past my father as if he were a ghost, while she takes in all the riches on the shelves. She looks down at the coin in her hand. She returns the coin to its small velvet sack, places the sack back in the box, closes the lid. Atlas with his burden stares balefully out at her.
Maybe just this, she says, placing her hand on the box. This should be enough.
I daresay it would, says the old man. That one coin is near price-less. The entire set is beyond imagining. More than one fortune has gone into acquiring what is in that box. Nora has asked for you. You didn't say good-bye.
How is she?
Her arthritis, well, you know. She hobbles through her day but is ever cheerful. She is making her famous duck tomorrow evening. Such an event, all the flame and pageantry. It was always your favorite. You must join us.
I can't, she says.
Just one last time. Please. For Nora's sake. To say good-bye.
She glances at my father. No, she says.
Her glance is quick, furtive, but the old man catches it with all its import. He turns to my father. So this is the one.
Yes, she says.
Our motorcycle man. Well, he certainly is big enough.
He loves me.
I don't doubt that. And you, my sweet. Do you love him back?
Her jaw rises, there is a quiver in her voice as she says, Yes. I do.
And that is why you can't share one last meal with me, one last evening to pass our good-byes, one last chance to share brandy by the fire, to kiss gently as the phonograph plays the Verdi you so much admire, to hold hands as we ascend together the stairs, one last time to spread the satin sheets on your soft featherbed.
Go to hell, she says.
My dear dear sweet. He mows lawns for a living.
Our love is enough.
Obviously not, or you wouldn't be here. But if that is what you want, then go. My blessing on you both, he says even as he steps forward to the table, grabs hold of the box of coins, snatches it away from her hand, and clutches it to his chest. Go, he says. But know that when you leave here, you leave with nothing. Let your lawn mower man take care of you from here on in. The two of you will be quite happy, I am sure, in your penniless love.
You owe me, she says.
Who owes whom? Go back to what you were when I found you, in your cheap clothes, chewing your gum, so very proud of your stenography.
She steps forward and slaps him.
And the old man laughs. He laughs, laughs his Brahmin laugh, his jaw tight, his laughter loud, mocking, carrying in it all the solid self-certainty of his class.
She hits him with the bottom of her fist, first the one then the other, she hits him on the shoulder, on the chest, she hits him again and again, hits him with all her fury, even as the old man continues his assaultive laughter.
It is then, only then, that my father feels able to intrude upon their scene. The same thing in the laughter that so infuriates her sends a calm into my father. He knows where he belongs, he understands perfectly his place, finds a comfort in that knowledge that his son will never know. The truth is in the very Brahmin accent that intimidated him just a few moments before. Except he doesn't want anything that the world of this room, this house, this man has to offer. My father has already gotten all he ever wanted, his lover, his one true love. It was a mistake to come here, he knows, a mistake from the start. But he also knows, with a sense of relief, that it is over, that whatever she had come for is gone and it is now time to leave. He steps forward with his own calm, takes hold of her from the waist, pulls her back, away from the old man, who is now shielding himself with the box.
Let's go, says my father.
No, she says.
But he is pulling her away, away from the man, this room, this house. She is fighting him, fighting him and the old man both as he pulls her away, and then she slips out of his grasp.
She slips out of his grasp, grabs the box from the old man, swings it back, and slams it into the old man's head.
The old man falls to his knees.
She swings the box again, a corner plunges into his scalp, blood spurts. She swings the box again.
By the time my father is able to make sense of what he has seen, is able to gather his wits enough to grab her at the waist and pull her away, throw her to the other side of the room, the old man is sprawled dead on the floor, the bloodied box is lying by his side, and her skirt, her blouse, her hands are stained red with the old man's blood.
What have you done? he says, staring now at the devastation before him.
She rises from the floor, slowly, carefully, weaving back and forth as she rises, and when, finally, she is standing, she makes her way to her lover, my father, her lover.
I didn't mean to, she says. He drove me to it.
He steps away from her, backs away until his shoulders are against a wall and the corpse is between him and the girl, his love, the girl in the pleated skirt. But she steps up to the corpse of the old man until she is facing my father, close to my father and she says, It will be all right, Jesse, won't it?
My father is paralyzed with loss as she reaches her bloodied hands to touch him, leaves a trail of blood on his arm, his shoulder, his collar. She places her hands at the back of his neck and stands on tiptoes and pulls him to her as she pulled him to her just moments before in the darkness.
We'll be forever together, like we said, Jesse, like we promised. Together forever, you and me, like you told me was all you ever wanted, like you made me promise.
And then she kisses him, while they stand over the old man's corpse, she promises my father everything he ever wanted just moments before, and she kisses him, and my father, God forgive him, kisses her back.
"Kissed," he said in the softest of whispers as I leaned so close the plastic of his mask brushed against my ear. "Kissed her back."
It would have been nicely symmetric if the poison of the story had its way with him right then, sent him into respiratory failure, clanging the alarms, bringing the army of doctors and nurses and technicians rushing to that room to battle for my father's life as I stood by and watched with a horrified silence. But it didn't right then, not right then. My father whispered, "Kissed her back," and then his eyes closed and he drifted off to some finer place. And his respiratory rate eased, and his heartbeat slowed, and somehow the level of the oxygen in his blood started to rise. Eighty-eight percent. Eighty-nine percent. Ninety percent. I left my father in the hospital that night with a slight sense of hope that maybe the worst had been revealed and so the worst was behind him.
But it was a feint, hope with my father was always a feint, and the alarms were sounded not long after I stepped out the hospital's front door.
Chapter.
41.
TRAFFIC COURT. 'NUFF said.
"All rise."
About time.
We'd been waiting an hour for the judge to show his face, all of us assigned to Courtroom 16 in the large brick building on Spring Garden Street. We had stood in a line that stretched well out the door, we had raised our arms through the metal detectors, we had checked our cell phones at the information booth, we had clutched our summonses and found our courtrooms and taken our places on the hard black benches. We were there against our wills, we had better things to do, like root canal and the Jenny Jones Show, but there had been no choice for us, we were required by law to atone and atone we would, for against the traffic laws of the City of Philadelphia we all had sinned. We had driven with suspended licenses, we had driven without insurance, we had driven the wrong way down one-way streets, we had failed to yield, we had parked where we had no business parking, we had driven drunk, God forgive us, for MADD never would. We had run through red lights, we had run through stop signs, we had sped, yes we had, and it had felt good, shifting our gears as the tachometer flared and our hearts sang and our rate of speed flew above the legal limits. But believe us, Judge, the cops were out to get us, the radar guns were off, we didn't do it, and we won't do it again. We were good drivers, all of us, despite what our records said, and we were willing to pay the fines, but please, judge, please don't give us the points, not the points, please.
"All rise."
We rose as one.
The judge was a creased old man with a sun-lined face and yellow hair combed back over his skull. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. If you saw him on the street you'd feel sorry for him and offer to buy him coffee and an egg sandwich, but here, standing now behind the bench in his black robe, even unzipped as it was, you saw not the face of a homeless vagrant but instead the weathered face of justice. He sat. We sat. His name was Judge Geary, we all knew that because of the plaque on the edge of the bench that read JUDGE GEARY. He took a deep breath through the unlit cigarette, cocked his head like Dean Martin before a song, and said in his croak of a voice, "Let's go."
The gray-haired clerk took the first file off his pile, called out a name in a voice sharp and loud, walked the file to the judge, and Traffic Court began.
It didn't take much crushing insight to figure out how Traffic Court worked in Philadelphia. The first names called were all of defendants represented by counsel. The judge would read the offense and shake his head with dismay. The lawyer would say a few rote words in defense. The judge would reduce the fine, order no points be given, admonish counsel to explain to the client what he had done wrong so he wouldn't do it again. It seemed, in those first few cases, that the judge was in a fine mood at this session and lenience would hold sway. We, all of us, sitting on our benches with our summonses in our laps and our licenses on the line, we, all of us, felt the stirrings of relief. And then the first case was called without representation of a lawyer and things suddenly turned.
"What were you doing going the wrong way down Locust Street?" said the judge.
"I was on my way to the doctor," said the defendant.
"Answer the question," barked the clerk.
"I didn't know-"
"Pay the fine, full points, court costs. Next."
"But Judge-"
"Next."
"Move along," said the clerk before he called the next name.
"You know you can't drive without insurance, don't you?" said the judge to the next defendant.
"I couldn't get it. No one would give it and I had to get to work. I got a kid-"
"But you can't drive without insurance. Here you are running stop signs without insurance. What would have happened to the pedestrian you might have hit?"
"I didn't hit no-"
"Answer the question."
"I slowed down at the stop sign, I did. The cop was-"
"Give me your license, Ms. Jenkins. Give it right up. You'll get it back in six months."
"But Judge, I got to-"
"Take the bus. Pay the two hundred, three points, license suspended, and not to be returned without proof of insurance. Next."
"But Judge-"
"Move along," said the clerk.
And on it went. And on.
It was a killing field in there, all manner of defenses shot down by old Judge Geary in the rigid pursuit of fines and points and the gleeful seizure of licenses. Except for those represented by counsel. Because, for some reason, the mere fact of having counsel by your side severely ameliorated the harshness of justice, and not just any counsel, but lawyers who make their living in Traffic Court, lawyers whose practice depends on the kindness of judges, elected judges, judges who must raise money every five years as they run for reelection.
Sniff sniff. What's that I smell? Crab fries?
Well, all right, that was the way the game was played. And no, in all my life I had never donated a cent to the campaigns of those noble public servants running for a position on Traffic Court. But still, I was wondering why the clerk hadn't yet called my name. Before court began I had identified myself as a lawyer, and he had pulled aside my file. In every courtroom in the land where the public stands before a judge, lawyers go first. It wasn't courtesy, it was custom, and yet here I was, still waiting.
I drew the clerk's attention. He was an older man, with big shoes, a tight smile, and a face full of secrets. His silver hair was shiny with grease and pulled straight back like the grill of a sleek old Caddie. He wore his navy blazer with the medallion of the Philadelphia Traffic Court at his breast and a thick ring on his pinkie.
I raised a finger, looked at my watch.
He nodded and called another name not my own.
There wasn't much more I could do. I sat slumped on the lawyers' bench in the well, watching the ruthless enforcement of the traffic laws in case after case after case, wondering if ever I would be called, when the back doors of the courtroom swung open and two uniformed cops, with guns on their hips, stepped into the courtroom.
I sat up straight, passed my gaze over those still waiting for their hearings. Uh oh, I thought, someone is not getting off with merely a fine and points. Someone is in serious trouble. And then the clerk, in a clear, hard voice, called out, "Victor Carl."
I stood, moved to the bench, glanced behind me at the cops, standing like sentries in the aisle.
The clerk handed the file to the judge, whispered something in his ear, the judge's eyes snapped up to take in the suddenly more interesting sight of me. The clerk slinked back from the bench and took his place beside me as the judge made a quick examination of my file.
"It appears you were in quite a hurry, Mr. Carl?"
"Your Honor, I am sorry to say that the police officer was entirely overzealous that morning and I don't understand how he could have thought to-"
"You weren't on Second Street?"
"I was, Your Honor, and there is a stop sign there, true, but-"
"You mean to tell me you came to a full and complete stop as per the traffic laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?"