The Crooked Heart of Mercy Read online

  Dedication

  For Sweet Timothy

  Always, you help me to believe

  Epigraph

  ‘O look, look in the mirror,

  O look in your distress:

  Life remains a blessing

  Although you cannot bless.

  ‘O stand, stand at the window

  As the tears scald and start;

  You shall love your crooked neighbour

  With your crooked heart.’

  —W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening”

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One: Ben

  One: Maggie

  Two: Ben

  Two: Maggie

  Three: Ben

  Three: Maggie

  Four: Ben

  Four: Maggie

  Five: Ben

  Five: Maggie

  Six: Ben

  Six: Maggie

  Seven: Ben

  Seven: Maggie

  Eight: Ben

  Eight: Maggie

  Nine: Ben

  Nine: Maggie

  Ten: Ben

  Ten: Maggie

  Eleven: Ben

  Eleven: Maggie

  Twelve: Ben

  Twelve: Maggie

  Thirteen: Ben

  Thirteen: Maggie

  Fourteen: Ben

  Fourteen: Maggie

  Fifteen: Ben

  Fifteen: Maggie

  Sixteen: Ben

  Sixteen: Maggie

  Seventeen: Ben

  Seventeen: Maggie

  Eighteen: Ben

  Eighteen: Maggie

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . . * About the author

  About the book

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Ben

  Do you know what day it is today?”

  The man just got here and he wants to know what day it is. A day late and a dollar short? A cold day in hell? It is a timeless question—it suits the room. A white, white room. White as a scream, floor to ceiling, bed to nightstand. Maybe it’s supposed to feel clean. It feels more like we’re locked in an instant that never ends.

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  When you say you, do you mean you? Or him? Do you mean Ben? Benjamin?

  “Which do you prefer? Can I call you Ben? Do you know how you ended up with those bandages on your head, Ben?”

  Dr. Lambert wants to know about the hole. Ben’s black hole. If he stuck his finger in, surely Lambert could find the answer in there. How did the hole come to be? That’s the question. They shot him. Boy, they did. The boy did. Meant it too. Muzzle to the head. And then he was dead. Bullet in. Bullet out—now that was cheating. He shouldn’t be above-ground. It’s not a trampoline down there. It’s hell. You get what you deserve. Don’tcha think, Doctor?

  “Is that what you think?”

  Lambert is not the kind of doctor who puts Humpty back together. He’s the kind who roots around in your brains until they dribble out your mouth, the kind who sidles up with phony, fool-blue eyes, and then tries to muscle into the black hole. Go ahead, buddy. Nothing but tar in there.

  “Not many survive a gunshot to the head,” Lambert says. “What do you make of that?”

  Survive? Who survived? Just because you save the body doesn’t mean you save the man. Shell’s empty. The chicken’s gone.

  “Hm,” Lambert says. “So I’m talking to a shell. Where is Ben?”

  Wandering in the desert.

  “So who am I talking to?”

  That Lambert, he’s a crafty sonuvabitch. Give him that.

  The doctor shifts in his chair, like we’re about to go for a long drive. “Why don’t you tell me how your body got here, and we’ll get to your self later.”

  Self. Is that like a soul?

  Joke’s on him. How does anyone get here? Let the black hole speak:

  Ben should be with his wife and kid. That’s where he should be now. But he killed them and they killed him right back. First off: He should have manned up and gone to work on his birthday.

  Lambert’s got a face like a graveyard when he says, “Why don’t we talk about that. You’re employed as a chauffeur, is that correct?”

  Correct.

  Ben was driver to the stars and the wish-they-were-stars. Made an extra buck where he could. Maggie cleaned apartments. Fifteen bucks an hour. Oldsters mostly. The old ladies loved Maggie. They wanted to give her the world, but all they had was Medicare. So they tipped with pills instead. Old vials of Percocet, Xanax . . . Ben would sell them to the hungry selves in the backseats. Few bucks here and there. Enough to keep the lights on.

  Then Ben’s thirty-fifth rolled around. The limo service wouldn’t give him the night off so he called in sick.

  Ben and Maggie had a little birthday party in the living room. After the baby went to sleep. It’s hard to get a two-year-old to bed.

  They did it though, got him settled and closed the door. Put on a little music. Happy birthday! Let’s get high! Couldn’t afford weed, so they popped some old lady’s Xanax. Poured a bit of wine. A perfect night, the way the breeze blew the curtains, the moon shone through the window. Ben and Maggie dancing. Just the two of them floating in the kitchen. Dancing, dancing. Hands against the moon.

  “Dancing in the moonlight,” Lambert says. “It sounds like—”

  What? No. Not out loud. That wasn’t supposed to be for you. That was not a story for the white, white room. That’s Ben’s story, Ben’s fuckup. Ruination. Ben is banished. And everyone’s better off for it.

  ONE

  Maggie

  How do you fill a hole? If you take from the whole to fill a hole, is anything made whole? Ben said that. It made the kind of sense that convinced me to leave him. Ben had an interesting mind. Before he lost it.

  Across the street, enormous claw-fisted diggers are excavating, wrenching up earth and stone, shoveling pits and building mountains. It’s not quite 10 A.M. and here I sit in a bus shelter, killing time until it is quite 10 A.M. You would think that I’d have learned to fill each moment so that I am never left to dig around in my own dirt like this. Every pause in the day is another chance to stare into the cavern.

  My gaze settles on the arm of a big yellow digger. Like some prehistoric beast, the machine roars and stutters over the hole as though it knows that one false move could send it tumbling down into the void it created.

  According to my watch, the time is now ten o’clock on the nose. I step out of the bus shelter, look at the relentless blue sky for a moment, and then head up the walkway toward the high-rise that has been looming behind me.

  I buzz 1414. A few moments later, music cuts through the crackling intercom and a woman’s voice shouts, “Yes? Sorry, what?”

  “Lucinda? This is Maggie, I’m here for—” A high-pitched squeal cuts through the speaker and the front door unlocks.

  Inside, gold-specked cream linoleum lines the floor. Taking up most of the tiny lobby is a cast stone fountain the size of a Volkswagen Bug, its grinning cherub dancing with an openmouthed fish under one arm. Water must have animated the thing at one time, spouted from that fish’s lips, but now it lies parched in that stone toddler’s arms, over a dry basin.

  The lobby walls are papered with gold and blue textured paisley. Straight ahead sits an elevator.

  Pressing the call button, I stare back at the big dry fountain and can’t help but think of a run-down Vegas casino. Perhaps, back before I was born, this building was home to many a swinging singles pad.

  The elevator arrives and the doors roll open.

  A f
lock of black birds erupt in my belly as I move up the shaft. Planting my feet I exhale slowly and concentrate on the numbers overhead. It’s still hard to ride in an elevator. Rising and falling feel too much alike.

  The elevator shudders to a rest and the car opens on the fourteenth floor to the same gold and blue paisley wallpaper that lined the lobby.

  I step out and listen to the compartments of life around me. From under a door on my right, canned laughter scratches its way out. To my left, the distant tinny wail of the music I heard on the intercom. My heels sink in the soft floor and I look down to see more decor from another era: shag carpet, charcoal with ribbons of royal blue.

  Turning back to the mirrored elevator doors, I check my reflection, fill my lungs, and try to find the muscles in my face that will give me the bright buoyant look I’ll need if I’m going to get this job. Nobody wants to hire misery, least of all old people. I rehearse the words from my online advertisement: My name is Maggie. I have two years’ experience cheerfully cleaning homes . . . I pat my shirt collar flat and head left down the hall.

  Scanning the door numbers, I come closer to the sound of harmonicas and guitars until I am face-to-face with 1414, listening to Willie Nelson sing “All of Me.”

  I knock and wait. Ben’s father liked to listen to country music. I push that prejudice aside and give the door another hard rap.

  From inside: “Just a second!” followed by the clearing of a throat. And then a hack and a louder, more insistent throat-clearing.

  Staring down at the shag pile, the way fibers nose the toes of my shoes, I work at my facial expression again. I recently heard someone on afternoon television claim that smiling elevates the mood and reduces stress, gets neurons firing in the brain. They said that even the neurons in an observer’s brain would light up as if he were smiling himself. Faking it works just as well.

  The rent on my dingy little apartment is due. I am willing to fake it.

  The door opens and Willie’s nasal warbling floods over me: Your goodbyes left me with eyes that cry and I know that I’m no good without you.

  Standing just inside, a small, creased woman keeps one hand on the doorknob, the other on her walker. Her hair is short and choppy as though she cut it herself. The scent of White Shoulders drifts. Hunched forward slightly, she opens the door wider. “Are you Maggie?”

  I extend my hand. “Yes. Hello.” I raise my voice over the music. “Are you Lucinda?”

  “I go by Lucy. Come in.” She jerks her head over her shoulder, turns her walker around, and heads toward a small dining area near the kitchen. I close the door and follow.

  She shoves her walker off to the side and plants herself in one of the blue vinyl and chrome dining chairs. She picks up a remote control—“I like having my music on. It’s better than listening to that racket outside”—points it at the television, and lowers the volume about ten points just as a new song begins. There is nothing on the screen but the name of the song and artist: “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” Jim Reeves.

  “Did I say ‘Lucinda’ when I called?” she asks. “I guess I do that sometimes. Sounds more proper, but I don’t really like it. I always know it’s someone I don’t want to talk to when they call me Lucinda. Government people.”

  I fold myself into the chair, kitty-corner to her. The apartment rug is beige and tan, a little beat-up, with crumbs and bits of paper here and there. The walls look as though they haven’t been painted in a good fifteen, twenty years. Lucy adjusts her glasses and looks down at a printout of my online housekeeping ad, the top sheet of a slim stack sitting in front of her. Picking up a palm-size magnifying glass, she studies my photo, comparing it to the face now in front of her. Eventually, she begins to reread the text under the picture.

  I watch her lips move for a couple of moments and then I look down at the small table’s Formica. “I like this dinette set. It’s kind of cool,” I offer.

  One of my old ladies on the west side used to love to hear that she was cool. She’d want an assessment each time I picked her up for a doctor’s appointment. “Do you think I look with-it in this outfit?” she would say. She loved little kids, so sometimes I’d bring Frankie with me and she’d hold up two blouses and ask him, “Which one is the coolest, Mr. Man?” Frankie would giggle and cover his mouth with both hands. Just about everything made that kid laugh.

  “The young ones love this table,” Lucy tells me and taps a thick fingernail on the surface.

  Her voice pulls me back into the room. Focus. You are going to get this job. God knows I need it. I need the money, but I also need the push and shove of work in my life. Can’t depend on Ben. He can’t help himself now, never mind me.

  “I’ve had the damn thing forty years. Pretty good shape except for that little burn mark. Lloyd used to smoke. But I don’t have to put up with that anymore.” She winks at me as though it’s an inside joke. “We’re separated. How about you, you got a husband?”

  “Yes. I mean, yes, we’re separated too.” The words clunk off my teeth. I wonder if I look as phony as I feel.

  “He’s not dead, is he?”

  My gut seizes. No, Ben is not dead. He wants to be, but for now he is not.

  “Mine is. Two years now. But I don’t believe in ‘dead.’ I believe in till-we-meet-again. How many people do you work for?”

  “Ah, I have—I used to have about six households, ah, clients, and then there was—I had some—” I had this rehearsed but now the euphemisms are all gone. “We had a family emerg—” That’s not the word. “A family tragedy. I couldn’t take care of work and—and the family—my husband. He and I have since separated and I’ve decided that it’s time I got back into the workforce. I can give you several references.” I open my purse and take out a list of names, set it down in front of her. “These are all people I worked for. They had to replace me. I mean, they couldn’t do without, ah, although, one of them, Mary, might—” Oh Christ, shut up. Nobody wants to hear what happened. Nobody knows what the hell to do with it.

  Lucy moves her magnifying glass over the list of references and then goes back to my advertisement and reads aloud: “I have two years’ experience cheerfully cleaning homes for an array of clients. I am happy to take care of your errands or take you to appointments. I’m a reliable person, and I particularly enjoy taking care of the needs of seniors. . . .” She looks up. “You enjoy taking care of seniors?”

  “Yes. I like feeling helpful. Useful. I like to hear about people’s pasts.”

  She snorts. “Do you have kids?”

  Before I can retrieve the correct response, she shoves her little stack of papers to the side and reveals a children’s picture book. Turning it around, she slides it over. “I thought if you had kids, I was going to show you my book. Pennywhistle Pig.”

  In front of me now is a bright pink pig dancing on the large glossy hardcover. Standing on his hind legs, he grins and plays a pennywhistle to a family of skunks.

  “It won a silver medal in the Strawberry Shortcake Awards! See, here’s my author photo.” Lucy takes the book out of my hands and opens to the back flap. “That’s the guy who did the illustrations.” She pokes at the picture below and then flips back to page one. “Came out about ten years ago. Still sells though. Want to read a little?”

  She sets the book back in front of me, open to that rosy pig sitting on his veranda, drinking a glass of orange juice. Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle Pig, I read, and then I feel a soft hint of breath in my ear. Milky, warm breath. The sense of it sends a shudder down my back. Oh Jesus. Not now.

  The text blurs. I keep my face pointed at the page.

  “Out loud!” Lucy insists.

  Focused on that grinning pig, I try again. “Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle Pig.” And then stop. The weight of him, the feel of his movement. Jesus Christ, it’s happening. I can feel his little bum in my lap, his warm back against my chest. Ghostly and real at once, the way I feel him in the twilight between sleep and waking, th
e whole of me curved around my Frankie before I open my eyes and find the truth of my life. Christ, make this go away. My lap is empty, and yet he is here, the sway of him. A part of me believes if I move quickly enough, I’ll catch my child waiting on the other side of some invisible membrane.

  Breathe. Cheerful. Smile, smiling . . . elevates mood . . . neurons firing.

  I will my cheeks up, push them right to the eyes, my mouth spread in some ghastly imitation of cheer, of someone you’d want to have around.

  I start again:

  “Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle, Pennywhistle Pig,

  saw the folks across the road begin to dance a jig.”

  “See it’s all in rhyme,” Lucy says. “Hardly anyone has the rhythm it takes to write in rhyme, but I’ve got it. The publisher said I’m the best they ever saw. Carry on.”

  The shudder has moved into my limbs. The page shakes as it turns. “Pennywhistle whispered—” My throat closes and I pause as I feel the fat, rolling tear slip off my jaw and land in a splat.

  Lucy recoils. She bends forward, dabs a finger on the page. “What’s that?” She takes the book from my hands and peers up at the ceiling.

  My head stays down. Frozen. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lucy looks from her book to my face. “You’re crying? Oh, for God’s sake.” She sounds agitated, reaches down into the basket at her walker’s base. Snatching a handful of tissues, she pushes one into my hand and wipes the page of the book with another.

  I wipe my eyes and nose. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for it.” I unzip my purse. “I’ll just pay for this and then I’ll go.”

  “No, no. It’s fine. Don’t be silly. I guess you’ve got—you must be going through a hard time. Your husband’s dead, but that’s not the end. The way I—”

  “He’s not dead. He’s here. He’s—” It’s all tumbling out of my mouth and it’s got to stop.

  I get up from the table. “I’m sorry. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  Seconds later I am rushing down the hall, tears streaming. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.