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It was dark by the time they got out of the building, without the whiskey, but with a ticket for speeding. The Sergeant had decided neither of them was drunk, but Thomas saw that the trooper who had arrested them took a long hard look at his passport before he gave it back to him. Thomas was unhappy about it, because there were plenty of cops who traded with the gangs, but there was nothing he could do about it.
“You should’ve known better than to offer me a ride,” Thomas said when they were back on the road. “I get arrested for breathing.”
“Forget it,” Rudolph said shortly and stepped on the gas.
Thomas felt under the seat. The gun was still there. The car hadn’t been searched. Maybe his luck was changing.
They got to the hospital a little after nine but the nurse at the entrance stopped Rudolph and whispered to him for awhile. Rudolph said, “Thank you,” in a fu
II
“The last thing she said,” Gretchen was saying, “was, ‘You tell your father, wherever he is, that I forgave him.’ Then she went into a coma and never came out of it.”
“She was nutty on the subject,” Thomas said. “She asked me to be on the lookout for him in Europe.”
It was late that night and the three of them were sitting in the living room of the house that Rudolph had shared, with his mother for the last few years. Billy was asleep upstairs and Martha was weeping in the kitchen for the woman who had been her daily opponent and tormentor. Billy had begged to be allowed to come East to see his grandmother for one last time and Gretchen had decided that death was a part of a child’s education, too, and brought him along. Her mother had forgiven Gretchen, too, before they had put her in the oxygen tent for the last time.
Rudolph had already made the arrangements for the funeral. He had spoken to Father McDo
The cable in Rome had had an unsettling effect on her. “Families,” she said. “Always goddamn families.” She had drunk a great deal that night and all the way back on the plane. If he hadn’t held her he was sure she would have fallen going down the steps from the plane. When he left her in New York she was in bed, looking frail and worn out. Now, facing his brother and sister in the hushed house he had shared with the dead woman, Rudolph was thankful his wife was not with him.
“After all this time,” Thomas said, “when your mother dies you’re pissing in a bottle for a cop.” Thomas was the only one drinking, but he was sober.
Gretchen had kissed him at the hospital, and held him close and in her grief she wasn’t the snooty, superior woman, looking down her nose at him, that he had remembered, but warm, loving, familiar. Thomas felt there was a chance they would forget the past and be reconciled finally. He had enough enemies in the world as it was, without keeping up a ru
“I dread the funeral,” Rudolph said. “All those old ladies she used to play bridge with. And what the hell will that idiot McDo
“She was broken in spirit by poverty and lack of love and she was devoted to God,” Gretchen said.
“If I can keep him to that,” Rudolph said.
“Excuse me,” Thomas said. He went out of the room and to the guest bedroom he was sharing with Billy. Gretchen was in the second extra room. Nobody had gone into their mother’s room yet.
“He seems different, doesn’t he?” Gretchen said, when she and Rudolph were alone.
“Yeah.”
“Subdued. Beaten, somehow.”
“Whatever it’ is,” Rudolph said, “it’s an improvement.”
They heard Thomas’s footsteps coming down the stairs and they broke off the conversation. Thomas came into the room, carrying something soft wrapped in tissue paper. “Here,” he said, handing it to Gretchen, “here’s something for you.”
Gretchen unwrapped the gift, spread out the scarf with the old map of the Mediterranean on it in three colors. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s lovely.” She got up and kissed him. For some reason the kiss u
“Ca
Thomas told him and they figured out that they must have been there at the same time, at least one day. “That’s terrible,” Rudolph said. “Brothers just passing each other by like that. From now on, Tom, we’ve got to keep in touch with each other.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. He knew he wanted to keep seeing Gretchen, but Rudolph was another matter. He had suffered too much at Rudolph’s hands. “Yeah,” Thomas said. “I’ll have my secretary send you a copy of my itinerary in the future.” He stood up. “I’m going to bed. I’ve had a long day.”
He went up the stairs. He wasn’t all that tired. He just didn’t want to be in the same room with Rudolph. If he’d known where the funeral home was, he’d have slipped out of the house and gone there and sat up all night with the body of his mother.
He didn’t want to wake Gretchen’s kid, asleep in blue pajamas in the other bed, so he didn’t turn on the light as he undressed, but just left the door open a little so that enough light came in from the hallway to see what he was doing. He didn’t have any pajamas and he wondered if the kid would comment on his sleeping in his shorts when he woke in the morning. Probably not. The kid seemed like a nice boy and he wouldn’t know automatically that he was supposed to have a low opinion of his uncle. The kid smelled clean, soapy. He had tried to comfort Gretchen at the hospital, hugging her, both of them crying. He didn’t remember ever having hugged his mother.
Looking at the kid made him think about Wesley. He had to see him. He had to do something about him. He couldn’t let him be brought up all his life by a tramp like Teresa.
He closed the door and got into the soft, clean bed. Rudolph slept in a bed like this every night of his life.
III
Teddy Boylan was at the funeral. So were a great many other people. The newspapers in Whitby and Port Philip had considered the news of the death of the mother of that leading citizen Rudolph Jordache important enough to display the obituary prominently. There wasn’t much to say about Mary Jordache, but the newspapers made up for it with descriptions of Rudolph’s honors and accomplishments, Chairman of the Board of Dee Cee Enterprises, President Junior Chamber of Commerce of Whitby, graduate cum laude, Whitby University. Member of the Board of Trustees, Whitby University, Member Town Pla
Poor Mom, Rudolph thought, as he surveyed the crowded church, she would have enjoyed seeing so many people come out for a ceremony in her honor.
Father McDo