And then Larry entered the room, and Jim looked at him and said, “Larry.” Larry’s eyes filled with tears, and he said, “Dad, I just have to tell you this.” Tears began to really run down the boy’s face—to Bob he looked like a boy, though he was thirty years old. But nothing about him made Bob feel that he was full-grown, unlike Larry’s brothers-in-law. Larry squeezed his eyes shut, and he said, “Dad, I just have to tell you: You sucked as a husband to Mom.”
Bob looked quickly at Jim, but Jim seemed to receive this remark with equanimity. “I know that, Larry,” he said. “But it was not at all as bad as you think it was. We had many good years, especially when we were in West Hartford and you were just a small kid.”
Larry said, “And you were famous, you were freakin’ famous at the time with that stupid Wally Packer trial, and—” He seemed unable to continue, and he finally said, “I’m going to get Ariel, and we’ll be back.”
Jim just nodded his head.
But as the boy turned his back to leave the room, Jim laconically pulled his hand from his pocket and raised his middle finger at his son, and Bob was amazed. He was even more amazed when Larry turned and said, “Did you just give me the finger? Dad. You are such a cretin. I can’t stand you, Dad. Jesus Christ.”
“Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” Jim asked his son calmly, and Larry said, pointing to the large mirror across the hall, “Do you have no eyes at all?” His face was contorted, and he said, “Dad, you just gave me the finger, you are such a piece of crap. I can’t believe Mom had to live with you.”
“I am.” Jim said this kindly. “You are absolutely right, Larry, I am a piece of crap.”
And Larry left the room, calling for Ariel; he could be heard going down the stairs, slamming the front door as he went out.
“Whoa,” said Bob quietly.
Jim sighed. “Yeah,” he said.
It came to Bob then that Larry had been born to the wrong father. He was a son that Helen would love—and she had—but he was not a son that Jim should have had. The girls were different, they were softer and warm, both with their father and with Bob. But Larry had always been different, and Bob thought: He should not have had Jim as a father.
Well.
There you are. A lot of people feel this way about their parents, and probably, thought Bob, a lot of parents feel this way about their kids. He thought then, briefly, of Mrs. Hasselbeck and how—to his knowledge—not one of her five sons ever came to visit her, they had all moved to the West Coast, and what was that about?
Bob, who, as we know, had no children, felt a sense of awe and sadness at this whole thing as he sat in front of his dry-eyed brother, Jim.
“Oy, Jimmy,” he murmured, and Jim said, “Oy, indeed.”
—
After a while Jim said, “Bob, tell me about this case you’ve just taken. Matt Beach. Talk to me about it.” And Bob said, “Sheesh, Jim, that can wait. We don’t have to talk about that now.”
But Jim sat forward with his elbows on his knees, and he said, “Truthfully? I’d like to hear about it. I think it would help me. Get my mind someplace else. So tell me.” He sat back.
And Bob—who had no trouble with the confidentiality of his client’s information, because it was Jim he was speaking to—told his brother about Matt, the amazing paintings, and the model Ashley Munroe, and Jim interrupted and said, “Does Matt get any money as a result of his mother’s death?”
“There’s a one-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy from his father. The man died years ago, so it has to be worth more than that now. And about fifty thousand from his mother’s estate. Plus the house.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “You might be fucked,” he said. He stood up, and Bob followed him out of the room.
Bob said, “But you don’t throw your mother into a quarry if you want the money. Because if she’d never been found, it would take five years for her to be declared dead.”
“Good point, but does Matt know that?” was all Jim said.
6
Two days later Bob was sitting in his office in Shirley Falls waiting for Diana Beach to show up. Even though it was the first week of April, it had snowed a couple of inches the night before, and while the snow was (sort of) melting, it still covered the streets and the sidewalks. A lot of sidewalks hadn’t been cleared yet, and Bob’s feet, in his sneakers, were feeling wet. Today was another gray day, and Bob switched on his desk lamp and also the tall lamp in the corner of the room. Then he sat down at his desk with his laptop open, glancing over the notes he had taken from his visit to Matt Beach. In his mind, he thought: Go away, Jim. Because he needed to stop thinking about Jim and Helen; he needed to concentrate now on Matt and Diana.
He kept picturing Matt—what was it about him? His anxious face had settled itself deeply into Bob’s mind. And those paintings! The guy had really taught himself to paint. Bob didn’t know that a person could teach himself to paint like that. But Matt’s paintings were sophisticated, is what went through Bob’s mind. With the strokes controlled and yet free—the colors vibrant and right. And Bob thought of that stack of art books, with the tattered covers, that had been in Matt’s studio, the guy had been seriously teaching himself to paint. Bob shook his head slowly. He thought then of Margaret, when she had been speaking of Lucy, saying that artists are childlike, and Matt had that quality. It was difficult for Bob to remember that Matt was fifty-nine years old. But he also, Bob thought, had never really learned to socialize, and that was part of it as well.
At exactly two o’clock Bob heard the elevator door open, he heard the sound of a woman’s heels heading down the hall away from his office and then heading back; people often did this. There were no signs telling them where the different offices were. He got up and opened the door.
“Bob.”
Bob stepped back and Diana Beach walked in. She was a tall woman, well-dressed, wearing a navy blue blazer and a blue tweed skirt that went just below her knees, and then brown pumps; the edges of her shoes were wet from the snow. She did not look like she came from Shirley Falls, as he had expected she would not. And she looked much younger than he had expected; he thought of Susan recently telling him that the women in town thought Diana had had plastic surgery and he realized this was most likely true; he had seen women in New York who looked this way.
“Hello, Diana. Have a seat.” He indicated with his hand a chair across from his. Bob sat down slowly, heavily, into his swivel-backed chair behind his desk. “Sorry I had to cancel our meeting the other day.” Bob had not told her the reason why.
Diana placed her handbag on the floor next to her and, crossing her legs, said, “Oh, that’s all right. How have you been, Bob?”
“I’ve been fine. What about you?”
She really was a pretty woman. Her hair was dyed a pale brown and tucked up neatly on her head, and her skin was smooth. She had large eyes and wore no glasses. He would not have recognized her. But then he had never really known her so many years before when he was in school with her.
She said, “Are they going to arrest Matt?” She leaned forward as she asked this.
“Not sure. They have to have something to pin him to the crime and they don’t really—yet.”
“Bob, this whole thing is just making me sick.” Diana crossed her legs the other way and smoothed her skirt.
“How often did you see your mother?” Bob asked, and Diana said, “Maybe once a year? Twice? I would drive up. But it was so unhealthy, their situation.”
“In what way?” Bob asked.
“Oh, she was so old, and he could barely do all the care for her, and I kept saying, You must get someone in to help you. And he just wouldn’t.” She added, “Honestly, I could barely stand to see them. But my older brother cut himself off from the family years ago, and I’m all that Matt has.”
“When was the last time you saw your mother?” Bob asked, and she said, right away, “About a month before she disappeared.”
