CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tom was carrying a hibachi out onto the porch when I got out of my car. He waved and I waved back.

“You’re gonna barbecue in this weather?” I asked him.

“Sure. Barb just got her Christmas bonus. Brought home a few nice steaks.”

“Good for you guys,” I said. “Enjoy it.”

“We will.”

I hesitated before unlocking my door. “Hey, Tom?”

“What?”

“Jimmy says you’ve got a pretty good memory—”

“Excellent, in fact,” Tom interrupted.

“Okay. Then maybe you can fill me in on something. You’ve lived in Claxton your whole life, right?”

“Yeah. Shoot.”

“Do you remember a murder happening here in the eighties? Of a guy named Brownlow?”

“Brownlow?” Tom ripped open his bag of charcoal, frowning. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He was murdered in Freeman Park, I believe.”

“Oh. You mean the Glass Girl business. Of course.”

“Glass Girl?” I croaked.

“Yeah. That was so stupid. I like to think it was some les-bionic feminist vigilante justice group. Then the idiotic local news starts calling ’em ‘The Glass Girl.’ Lame.”

“Vigilante justice?”

“Sure. They figured out the bastard was a sicko.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that’s where the whole Glass Girl theory came from. This sicko had been in jail for beating the crap outta some girl. And there was some other shit he probably did. Some real sicko shit. At first everybody thought he was just some poor sucker who’d gotten knifed or something. Took them a while to figure out about him, but when they did … turned out he was a real psycho.

“Figure he had it coming one way or another. But there were inconsistencies in that Glass Girl theory. Didn’t sound to me like it could be some teenage girl taking that big guy on. The Daily did a great series about five years ago, about the city’s cold cases. And there were definitely some big holes in that Glass Girl case.”

I fumbled to find the right key, then dropped the whole keychain on the porch.

“Why do you ask?” Tom said. “Glass Girl’s pretty old news these days.”

I stooped for my keys. “Oh, someone at work just referred to it, that’s all. It sounded kind of interesting. When did they actually do that cold case series?”

“Oh, I don’t know … ’98 or so?”

“Huh. Sure sounds interesting.”

“Yeah. If it interests you, you should check it out sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

• • •

When I got up to my apartment, I sank into a kitchen chair to consider this new take on Mary Anne. Mary Anne as everyone’s mystery, not just mine and Mona’s.

Why had I begun to think of Mary Anne as ours? Dan had spent his nights with her. Mr. Phillips had sat in the sun with her, telling her war stories. But what was left of her here, the cits, her story—that was ours, because we had found it. But now that it was shaping up, it was clear that whoever the story really belonged to, there were certainly people who had a greater claim to it than us.

How strong was Claxton’s interest in the story? I wondered. And how accurate was Tom’s take on Derek Brownlow? It sounded like Mona hadn’t gone far enough in her newspaper search. I decided I’d try to get to the library before it closed for the holidays.

My father called me just as I was pouring bottled vodka sauce on my corkscrew pasta. I told him about my Christmas Eve plans.

“But William,” he insisted, “you have to come for Christmas Eve. This is the year.”

“The year for what?”

“For the flaming plum pudding. You were so helpful with the Thanksgiving dessert medley. I’ve decided that the flaming plum pudding would be a satisfying joint project.”

“So let’s do it Christmas Day.”

“No, William. I’m doing a torte and a cookie platter Christmas Day. Flaming plum pudding is definitely Christmas Eve fare. And we’ll be using real beef suet. The old-fashioned way. No Crisco substitutions.”

“What’s beef suet?”

“What are they teaching you there at your new job? Suet is fat from around the cow’s organs.”

“Hot damn, Dad. That sounds right up Mom’s alley. She can help you this time.”

“That’s ridiculous. Your mother has no interest in my yuletide culinary experiments.”

“Make it with Jen, then,” I said. “She’d love it.”

“She won’t help,” Dad said, sounding small and defeated. I thought of old Mr. Stephen Peterson, and felt a little sad. Maybe Jimmy was right. Maybe you turn into an old man quicker than you’d ever expect.

“No,” I admitted. “But she’d write a poem about it.”

My father sighed exaggeratedly into the phone.

“I can hear it now,” I said. “‘The flames. THE FLAMES.’”

“Don’t be absurd. Your sister’s writing is highly restrained.”

“Do you think Jen ever writes poems about us?”

“I’m not sure,” my father answered. “She wrote this strange one about Nixon’s daughters a couple of years back. I couldn’t help but wonder what that one was really about.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to check it out sometime, if she’s ever willing to dig it up.”

“William. Why don’t you just bring this girl down to have Christmas with us?”

“That would be a little scary for this stage of the relationship. I mean, we’re not even dating.”

“Then why in heaven’s name are you spending Christmas Eve with her?”

A fairly logical question. I paused before answering.

“Well?” my father said.

“This girl isn’t a girlfriend,” I said carefully. “But she’s more like … a good investment. She’s the sort who might grow into me someday. She’s the sort who might realize, maybe in a year or two, what kind of potential I have. She might recommend me to a friend.”

For a few moments, no more sounds came from my father’s end.

“That doesn’t sound very promising to me, William,” he said finally.

“Well—”

“Not promising enough to disappoint your mother like this.”

“How do you know she’ll be disappointed? She won’t care. As long as I’m there Christmas Day.”

“It’s really too bad you’re going to miss it. Your sister says she has an announcement. Another poetry prize, or something, I think. And what about Christmas morning?” Dad sounded a little peevish.

“How about this,” I said. “I have dinner with Mona. Did I mention I’m bringing dessert? I thought you’d at least like that part. Then I drive down home after. I’ll probably arrive around midnight. Just like Santa Claus.”

“Your mother wouldn’t want you driving in the middle of the night.”

“I think that’s what I’ll do. I’ll bet the highway will be empty then. Who drives around in the middle of the night Christmas Eve? I’ll fly down 91. Be there in an hour. We’ll all wake up together, and do the Christmas morning thing.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, William,” my father said. “But if that’s what you choose to do, then at the very least, don’t drive like a maniac. If you’re going to miss the meal anyway, there’s no sense rushing.”

“That’s the plan, then. I’ll come late Christmas Eve. You’ll save the cooking project till the next day?”

“We’ll see,” he said. “Uh … William …”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking. You’d better do your yearly checkup before long. It’s about that time, isn’t it?”

“I already did it,” I said. “A couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh? You went all the way down to Hartford and saw Dr. B.?”

“No,” I said. “I went and found a local doctor. Through my very own HMO.”

“And everything was …”

“Normal. Of course.”

“You should have called us. Just to let us know. And I’m sure we could’ve arranged for a way for you to see Dr. B. Your mother and I would have paid for it if it was a matter of cost …”

“Don’t worry about it. The guys up here are pretty good. After the crystal elixir and the colonic irrigation, I was feeling a hundred percent.”

“Very amusing. So you had a scan, then?”

“Yes. But there’s nothing to worry about. It’ll be five years on the twenty-eighth. I’m even thinking of celebrating a little.”

Dad paused before speaking.

“William,” he said again.

“What, Dad?”

“If this Mona doesn’t already recognize your potential, then she’s probably not a very smart girl.”

“Oh God. I was only joking around about that.”

“I suspect that you weren’t. And if you really want to wow this girl, can I suggest a flaming dessert? I don’t know what would be more impressive than a dessert presented in flaming liquor.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised. “But I was thinking of doing some kind of soufflé.”

I heard my dad take in a breath.

“Well then,” he said. “Just remember to look for those soft, curled peaks when beating your whites.”

“Will do,” I said, chuckling inwardly. I’d mentioned the soufflé just to get him to say it. Soft, curled peaks. “See you soon.”

Soft, curled peaks. The intensity and calm precision of his pronunciation made me think of the most common phrase from his old repertoire.

A dull, throbbing pain.

My most vivid and consistent memory of my father in my junior high and high school years is of him sitting down nightly at the cleared kitchen table with his cordless phone and a gimlet. Every night he’d call to check on the people whose wisdom teeth he’d pulled that day.

You’ll feel a dull, throbbing pain, perhaps through most of the night. Take one of the codeine pills I prescribed. By morning, the worst should be behind you. If the pain gets worse, you should give me a call.

Occasionally there was more: Which one? The bottom right one? Yes. I thought so. That was the difficult one coming out.

His tone usually softened if someone seemed to be really suffering. But there was always the ominous warning of the dull, throbbing pain.

As I entered high school, I was aware that about 75 percent of the time, the person on the line was one of my schoolmates. But usually I didn’t have any idea who he had on the phone. Rarely did I even wonder which bloody maw of which of my classmates he had stared down into that day.

Has the bleeding stopped? Amy, can you put your mother on? I can’t understand what you’re trying to say.

Naturally, he used only first names most of the time. It didn’t occur to me then that he might be growing weary of yanking out people’s teeth. He pulled his last tooth when I was about halfway through my treatments. About six months later, we were both ready to go back to school: me to college, he to culinary school. In between, we spent a lot of time at home together. We didn’t have many friends, he and I. We experimented with his new Cuisinart mixer. We counted the days.