Don't I Know You? Page 7

  It wasn’t hard to find Manuel after the service. Tina kept hugging Steven, then pulling back, holding his shoulders, looking at him and crying. She hung on him; her girls hung on her, one to each leg. They were some kind of giant puppet, some extinct animal.

  “Tina,” Manuel said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “give the boy some air.”

  She shrugged his hand off. “I’ll give you some air,” she said without any crabbiness at all.

  He sighed and reached down to the girls. “Come,” he said. “Let your mother alone.” He took the girls across the room to the flower arrangements by the front door.

  Tina leaned in close. “Your neighbors,” she said. “My door doesn’t stop ringing with people wanting to know business that isn’t theirs.”

  Manuel was pointing to flowers and the girls were announcing the colors. His back was to Steven.

  His father was next to Manuel, waving Steven over. Steven could see the black limo out the open door behind his father. He wondered if he could ask for Manuel to ride with them.

  His father and Manuel started talking. When had they met? The girls played hide-and-seek behind the men’s legs.

  Could it have been his father in the apartment? He tried to hear the voice for the nine-hundreth time. “I owe you.” “I owe you.” He watched his father’s mouth and laid the line over what he was seeing.

  “Mrs. Carpanetti,” Tina said. “She’s the only human being in the whole building. She asked about you, and nothing else.”

  A reporter, Steven thought. Could it have been a reporter? He didn’t think Manuel would’ve let a reporter in.

  Manuel was nodding and looking at his feet. It was weird to see him in something other than work shoes. He was acting the way he acted around people he worked for.

  Juan came over. “The car’s ready,” he said. “Your dad said to get you.”

  “I need to talk to Manuel,” Steven said.

  “My Manuel?” Tina asked.

  “Here?” Juan said.

  Steven asked Tina if she’d mind telling his father that he needed a minute, and asking Manuel if he’d come over.

  She looked a little surprised, and a little like she was about to smile, but she said, “Sure,” and headed over to the two men.

  Juan said, “What’re you thinking?”

  “I need to know who was in the apartment,” Steven said.

  “I know,” he said. “But now? Here?”

  The three grown-ups were talking. His father checked his watch. Manuel looked over. Steven tried to make his face look kind.

  Juan swung Steven’s arm a little. “Are you okay?”

  Everyone was worried. Everyone had been watching him for warning signs, danger signals. First, they’d been worried he’d be feeling too much. Then, not enough.

  His father was walking out to the limo driver. Tina was rounding up the girls. Manuel was heading Steven’s way.

  “One thing about my mother dying,” Steven said. “It’s a whole lot easier to get my way.”

  “Steven,” Juan said. He almost never used Steven’s real name.

  “I’m okay,” Steven said.

  He could see Juan deciding to let it go.

  “Maybe your life is gonna be better,” Juan said. But when he saw Steven’s face, he apologized.

  They sat in the room they’d just come out of. The coffin was gone. The chairs were lined up as if things were about to begin instead of already over.

  Manuel sat the way he sat in the old dining chair he pulled out to the stoop. His expression said: I’m worried.

  “Who was with you the other day in the apartment?” Steven asked.

  He tried to watch Manuel the way McGuire watched people. He had no idea what he was looking for. There was more worry. He couldn’t tell if Manuel was thinking about lying.

  “What other day?” he asked.

  “I was there,” Steven said.

  “You were there,” he repeated, as if Steven were speaking another language.

  He was thinking. “The window,” he said.

  “Who was it?” Steven asked.

  They’d never talked like this with one another. Manuel glanced toward the door. It stayed closed.

  “Hijo,” he said. It sounded like he was going to say something else, but then he didn’t.

  He sat up straight. His jacket was an old winter one, too warm and too small. His big wristbones poked out of the sleeves like Frankenstein’s. He looked right at Steven. “I was there; you’re right. But there wasn’t no one with me.”

  Steven’s face, his neck, the top of his head got hot. “You’re lying,” he said.

  Manuel kept his eyes on him and shook his head. “Just me, hijo.”

  Steven felt five years old. Tears were starting. “So what were you doing there then?” His voice was wrong. “I could tell Detective McGuire,” he said.

  “You could do that,” Manuel said.

  “Why’re you lying to me?” Steven said.

  Manuel looked at the space where the coffin had been. He rubbed his kneecaps with the heels of his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You don’t lie to me,” Steven said. He’d meant it to sound fierce. It came out something else. More tears. His stomach again. “You like me.”

  Manuel nodded. “I do,” he said.

  Steven couldn’t stop crying. He hit his cheek with an open hand. He did it again.

  Manuel reached over and held his wrist. “No, no, no, no, no,” he said. He sounded like a train.

  “I can’t tell you nothing,” he said. “But you gotta trust me. It wasn’t no one did those things to your mama.”

  Manuel’s big brown hand was around his own skinny wrist.

  He put his other hand on the back of Steven’s neck and pulled him in. The top of Steven’s head butted him in the chest. He smelled of his little girls and the lobby. Steven looked at the floor between their feet. The door opened. Steven could hear the sounds of the front hall clearing out.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “No, man,” Manuel said, his hand rocking Steven’s neck. “For sure, I won’t.”

  His father said that Steven needed to “talk to someone.” Steven figured getting through an hour with anyone would be easier than arguing with a father he didn’t know at all.

  After, he told his father that the lady had been good. He wasn’t lying, but he knew he wasn’t going to tell her about what Manuel had said, and if he wasn’t going to talk about that, he didn’t see the point of talking at all. He told his father that he didn’t want to see her again.

  His father asked him to think about it.

  He said he would.

  The week after the funeral, a couple of days before they were leaving, McGuire called off the uniform guy. “No more notes,” he said. “Seems like our guy’s gonna leave you outta all this.”

  Tell him about Manuel, Steven thought. But he didn’t.

  “Let’s go get some weed,” Juan said. It was like he’d been trying really hard to be good while they focused on more important stuff, but now that the uniform guy was gone, it was permission to be normal again. They’d gotten stoned twice. But it was normal to act like they did it all the time.

  They went to the head shop on Columbus. It was between two brick buildings, a narrow alley with a door and a roof. A small Indian woman sat at the back end of it, unable to push her chair more than a few inches from the end table she used as a desk. She used a watch calculator to save space. The walls were lined with sheets of pegboard. Feather and bead earrings, bracelets, and necklaces hung from metal hooks. Cellophane packages of incense. Dark brown bottles of oils and stuff. Scarves and hats hung on clothespins from the ceiling. Nickel and dime bags of pot in small manila envelopes. Everything was small. It was like shopping for drugs in a dollhouse.

  They went to Central Park, one of those little gazebo things by the pond. There was Burger King stuff on the bench that someone had just left there, and a crumpled condom in the corner
.

  They sat on the edge of the railing, their backs to the path. The feeling of being stoned was good. The feeling about being stoned wasn’t. Nothing could get rid of the weirdness in his stomach.

  “It could be Manuel,” Juan said, like he knew Steven didn’t want to hear it.

  The sky was the color of sour milk. The backs of his thighs were sweating. Everything smelled worse in the heat.

  “He liked her,” Steven said. He’d started thinking about her in the past tense. Just in the last day. “He likes me,” he said.

  “He lied to you,” Juan said.

  “I know,” Steven said. “I was there.”

  “So why’d he lie?” Juan asked, again.

  “Why’d he lie?” Steven repeated, as if repeating it enough would make an answer appear.

  “He didn’t really lie,” Steven said. “He didn’t tell the whole truth.”

  Juan was quiet.

  They heard tiny bells behind them. It was the Cat Man, an old black man dressed in layers of beige clothes who circled the park pulling a haphazard train of little red wagons, tricycles, toddlers’ bikes with training wheels, and a shopping cart behind him. On every handlebar, seat, and basket, a cat. Some with one eye. Some with three legs. One with eight toes. The Cat Man rang finger-bells, clanged tiny cymbals, hit small metal wind chimes, a one-man concert for his cats.

  They watched him make his slow way down the path and out of sight.

  “You gotta tell someone,” Juan said.

  “Okay,” Steven said.

  “People don’t really like people they work for,” Juan said.

  “He liked us,” Steven said again.

  “Who liked you?” Phil asked from the path.

  Juan glanced at Steven. Steven could tell he was thinking: I can outrun him. Steven didn’t think he could. His hand was in his pocket. He closed it around the damp manila envelope.

  Phil ducked into the gazebo and sat on the bench across from them. He looked out at the pond. Some guy was rowing a girl and a baby around. He didn’t look so happy.

  Tell him about Manuel, Steven thought.

  Phil moved his feet inches one way, then inches the other. He asked how he’d been.

  Steven shrugged. “Good,” he said. It felt like he was keeping everything from everyone.

  Phil didn’t seem to have heard. “Listen,” he said to Juan. “I need to talk to Steven. He’ll meet you at home.”

  Juan looked skeptical. “We’re supposed to hang out together,” he said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Phil said. He didn’t sound like a murderer.

  “I’ll wait,” Juan said, pointing at a bench up on the path.

  Phil shrugged, and Juan left. He didn’t sit on the bench; he walked around it, keeping an eye on them.

  “They think I did it,” Phil said.

  Steven didn’t say anything. Some of the leaves behind the gazebo were already yellow and orange. There were years ahead of him without her.

  “Do you?” Phil asked.

  “No,” Steven said. He could feel his heart, but he didn’t know if that was because he believed himself or because he didn’t.

  He waited for Phil to tell him he hadn’t.

  Phil swept the Burger King stuff off the bench and out the back end of the gazebo with his forearm. Steven watched the cup of soda spill and roll down the short hill to the mud at the edge of the pond.

  “I loved your mom,” Phil said. He waited.

  “Yeah,” Steven said.

  “Think she loved me?” he asked.

  Steven still thought of him as his teacher. Phil used to bring green peppers to school for his lunch. He ate them whole, like an apple. It was weird to have this conversation with him. “I don’t know how to tell those kinds of things,” he said.

  One time his mother had made him sit in a field of daffodils at the base of Belvedere Castle.

  Phil looked sad. “She talked about you a lot,” Steven said.

  Juan was perched on the back of the bench, watching. Steven waved. Juan still looked worried.

  “She talked about you a lot,” Phil said.

  It made Steven feel better. He couldn’t believe it did that.

  An old man and an old woman rowed by. He didn’t look strong enough to row them anywhere. They looked like brother and sister. His face said: There isn’t anywhere I’d rather be.

  “Who do you think did it?” Steven asked, still watching the old couple.

  He could feel Phil’s eyes on him.

  “There was another man,” Phil said.

  “I know,” Steven said. There were a lot of other men, he thought.

  “We argued about him,” Phil said.

  “I know,” Steven said.

  “Did you meet him?” Phil asked.

  “I don’t know,” Steven said. The old woman tilted her head back to the sun.

  “There was someone named Kurt,” Steven said.

  Phil was quiet, then he said, “I didn’t know a Kurt.”

  Steven saw his mother with her feet in Kurt’s lap, and he was glad Phil didn’t have that picture in his mind.

  “Could you do something for me?” Steven asked.

  Phil was surprised.

  “Could you say, ‘I owe you’?”

  Phil was confused. He didn’t say anything.

  “There was someone in the apartment the other day,” Steven said. “Manuel and someone else. A guy.”

  “How do you know?” Phil asked.

  Steven explained.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “I know,” Steven said.

  They stared at one another.

  “So, can you say it?” Steven asked.

  He said it and looked at Steven. “Well?” he asked.

  It didn’t help one way or the other. “I don’t know,” Steven said.

  “It wasn’t me,” Phil said again.

  “Okay,” Steven said.

  The old couple were laughing. Phil glanced over his shoulder at them. “I don’t think they’re gonna catch the guy,” he said.

  Tell him about Manuel lying, Steven thought. Why aren’t you telling him about that?

  “Me neither,” Steven said. Time was passing. People had other things to think about. Or they didn’t have enough interest in this. In them. He didn’t want to be responsible for making people care again, or still. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t saying anything about Manuel.

  He was feeling sorry for himself. His mother hated it when he did that.

  “What’s gonna happen to me?” he said.

  Phil looked at him like he was pulling away on a bus. “Oh, bud,” he said. “You’ll move to San Diego and live with your dad and your sister and brother. And things will be hard, and then things’ll get easier.”

  “And stepmom,” Steven said. “I have a stepmom.”

  Phil nodded.

  “She doesn’t want me. She and my dad have like a contract about it,” Steven said.

  “You can’t take that personally,” Phil said. “She doesn’t even know you. When she gets to know you, she won’t feel that way anymore. She’ll be ashamed she ever felt that way.”

  “I can take it personally,” Steven said.

  They sat there.

  “Do you think catching the guy would make me feel better?” Steven asked.

  Phil didn’t answer. He seemed to be considering the question. Steven could be having this conversation with the guy who’d killed his mother. He needed Phil not to be the guy.

  “You’ll always miss your mom,” Phil said.

  It was true. Whether they caught the guy or not, whether his stepmother ever came to like him, whether his father turned out to be someone he admired, whether he turned out to be someone he liked. The one thing he could see in the open space ahead of him was the missing shape of his mother. It was reassuring to know it would always be there. He folded her in half, in quarters. He swallowed her. She would stay there, slowly unfolding for the rest of his life.

>   II

  December 1977

  six

  Lily Chin didn’t like Christmas shopping. It embarrassed her to walk up Madison laden with bags of unnecessary objects from Nikolai’s favorite stores. When the doorman opened the glass doors to Nikolai’s building, reaching to relieve her of her purchases, she felt like crying. She registered the extremity of the reaction.

  “Whadja get for me?” a vaguely southern voice from behind her asked, and something slipped from her throat to her chest. Matthew Cullen was leaning against a parked car. He wore a tweed jacket with the collar turned up and a black scarf, and squinted at her. He remained good-looking. “Don’t I know you?” he asked.

  They hadn’t seen each other in four years.

  The doorman hovered, unsure whether to step in.

  Lily stilled her face. “You used to,” she said, in a voice that she hoped held no sense of invitation.

  He held a palm to his chest, swaying as if struck. His gestures had always been like that.

  The doorman held the door wider, but when she didn’t go through it, he let it swing closed, moving a discrete distance away into the depths of the lobby.

  Matthew glanced up at the building. “I hear you’re getting married,” he said.

  He’d always had the ability to make her feel as if she were the setup for jokes she didn’t get. She had never asked how he knew the things he knew about her. She had merely sunned herself in the warmth of the knowledge. It had been, for a while, the best intimacy she had known.

  “What do you want?” she asked, not unkindly.

  He smiled. “There’s my Lily,” he said. “Beautiful, brisk Lily.”

  She had an image of his naked body in Nikolai’s bed. His body had been imperfect in perfect ways. She took a breath. Her chest was closed, the air reaching her lungs thin and tight.

  “It’s lovely to see you,” she said, gathering her packages.

  The doorman had the door open, pretending, in that doorman way, not to see.

  Matthew leaned in close and said quietly into her collar, “What have I ever wanted?” She could feel his breath through her scarf.