Hope to Die

"He would appear to you?"

"No, nothing like that. I guess that happens, I don't disbelieve in it, but it never happened to me. No, it was just my perceptions. I would think I saw him on the street, or in a crowd at school, anywhere, and then it would turn out to be somebody else, somebody who didn't look like him at all. You're nodding. I guess that happens a lot."

"I was about the same age when my father died. Fourteen, I was. And it was sudden, too. He was riding between two cars on the subway and must have lost his footing."

"That's terrible."

"For a couple of years afterward I had the same experience you described. Certain I was seeing him, even though I knew it was impossible. Well, it's somebody who looks a lot like him, I'd tell myself, and if I got close there'd be no resemblance there at all."

"I guess it's the mind's way of getting from denial to acceptance."

"Something like that. You said it was a strain for your parents. A strain on the marriage?"

"Neither of them ever moved out, and they didn't stop speaking. I was just the age to be super-aware of things without knowing what they amounted to. I was afraid that they were going to separate, to get divorced, but I think it was just that I'd lost my brother so now I was scared I was going to lose everybody else." Her eyes widened. "That's what happened, though, isn't it? It just took longer than I thought, but I'm all alone now."

She said the line entirely without affect, and I felt a chill.

I said, "Did either of them ever have an affair?"

"I've wondered," she said. "That's disgusting, isn't it? Wondering about your own parents that way. But I guess everybody does. Wonder, I mean. I don't know that everybody has an affair, although I gather most men do at one time or another."

That might have been provocative, flirtatious, if she'd lifted an eyebrow as she said it, or given me a look, or just put something extra into the words. But there was none of that. This wasn't about me, nor was it about the two of us.

"I'm not supposed to know this," she began, and then stopped talking and lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. I waited, and she took a breath and started in again. "My mother had an affair," she said. She spoke softly, and I had to strain to make out the words. "After Sean died. She was seeing someone. I knew it but I didn't know it, do you know what I mean?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know who it was," she said, "and I forgot about it. They were both fine, their marriage was fine, and if I ever thought about it I told myself I was mistaken. And then he died."

"The man who…"

"Yes. I was sitting quietly with a book and they must not have known I was in the room. This man had died, and he lived in Florida, and that's where the funeral was going to be. And my father asked my mother if she would have gone to the funeral if it was in New York. And she said she didn't know, she hadn't seen him in years, and would it bother my father if she went? Because she wouldn't go if he didn't want her to. And he said he didn't know how he would feel, and they both agreed it was all too hypothetical, and they dropped the subject and went into the other room, and they never did realize that I was there."

"And that was the man your mother had the affair with."

"Yes, I'm sure of it. From the whole tone of the conversation. But even if there was somebody else, a jealous husband or a vengeful lover, they'd know him, wouldn't they?"

"Who?"

"My parents. If he was the third man, if he was waiting here for them, they would recognize him. I mean, even if he wore a mask- "

"No, he wouldn't have been wearing a mask."

"Then wouldn't they know who he was?"

"He didn't intend to leave them alive."

"I know that," she said, "but what about his partner? If my parents walk in and my father says, 'Hey, Fred, what are you doing here?' "

"Ivanko would have to wonder," I agreed. "And that's the problem with the notion of the third man being an enemy, or anyone with a personal motive."

"They'd know him."

"Unless the third man was hired for the occasion," I said, and rejected the idea as soon as I'd spoken it. "No, this was no hired hand. It was expert, it was well-pla

"What's the difference?"

"A pro wouldn't have done anything that elaborate," I explained. "He might have tried to make it look like a burglary, but he wouldn't have brought a helper along, and certainly not an amateur. He'd have broken in, killed your parents the minute they walked into the house, and got out of there. He wouldn't bother setting up a couple of dead men in Brooklyn to take the rap for him, because all he had to do was go home. He'd be sitting in front of his big-screen TV in St. Louis or Sarasota while the police got nowhere investigating the killing."

"So it was someone who knew them," she said, "but someone they didn't know."

"Maybe it was someone you know."

"Me?"

"Is there anyone you could think of?"

"Anyone I know who would want to kill my parents?"

"A boyfriend whose attentions they discouraged," I suggested. "Anybody who might see them as standing in the way of a closer relationship with you."

"I'm not going with anyone," she said. "I haven't really been seeing anybody since Peter and I broke up."

"Peter."

"Peter Meredith. We broke up last fall. I was living with him on East Tenth Street and we were talking about moving to Brooklyn, but we broke up instead."

"Brooklyn."

"He knew some people, artists, who were going to chip in and buy a house in Williamsburg together. The building was a mess, and the idea was that everybody would work on the renovations together. There'd be three couples, and we'd each have a floor to ourselves and share the basement."

"On the order of an urban commune?"

"More like a do-it-yourself condo. I was intrigued at first. The neighborhood put me off a little, but not too much, because you knew it was getting gentrified in a serious way, with a steady stream of new people moving in. And prices were going up, too, so if we waited and tried to do the same thing a year later, well, we wouldn't be able to afford it, not in that neighborhood, anyway. They drew up papers and I brought them for my father to look over, and he said the numbers worked. He had a few minor changes to suggest, just so everything would be spelled out right from a legal standpoint, but he said basically it was all right. If it was what I really wanted to do."

"And it wasn't?"

She shook her head. "It's one thing to live with somebody in a rented apartment, his apartment, and another thing to buy a house together. That was much more of a commitment than I was ready to make. I liked living with him, and we'd have stayed together if it hadn't been for the whole business with the house. The way it worked out, I moved back here and Peter went in with his friends and bought the house."

"You weren't able to keep the apartment yourself?"

"It was his place to begin with. Anyway, I didn't like living there. It was all the way east in Alphabet City, and it's safe there now, not like it used to be, but it's so out of the way that it takes forever to get anywhere. I wanted to get my own place eventually, but why not live at home in the meantime and save up for something nice?"

"Did your parents get on well with Peter?"

"They liked him all right. Mom thought he was a little head-in-the-clouds for me, and I suppose he was, but she liked him. They both liked him."

"And how did he feel about the breakup?"

"Relieved, I think, by the time I finally moved out."

"It took you a while?"

She nodded. "I didn't want to rush into the house in Williamsburg, but I didn't want to rush out of the relationship, either. For a while I thought we could work something out."