Pale Kings and Princes

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Trying to be exactly what someone else thinks you should be must be very difficult,” Susan said.

“Oh, yes. Yes, it is, damned hard. I tried for fifteen years.”

Susan made her little neutral nod again.

“As hard as I could, so hard,” Caroline said, and shook her head. She looked in her lap again. She was wearing a light gray flannel skirt and a dark blue pullover sweater. A green silk scarf was knotted at her neck, and her thick hair was carefully brushed back, and tied with a green silk ribbon.

“He wanted, he wanted everything to be right. He was so fine a man. He deserved to have it right.”

“Umm,” Susan said.

Caroline shook her head again, this time more quickly as if to shake away something.

“But it wasn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t live that way anymore.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “That would be too hard.”

Two tears started in Caroline Rogers’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. Two more followed. She wasn’t boohooing, the tears merely came as she sat there. She wiped her right eye with the knuckle of her forefinger.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Let the tears come,” Susan said. “See what comes with them.”

She wiped at the other eye, then she put her hands back in her lap and the tears came faster. Then she put her hands up to her face and her shoulders hunched as she really cried.

“I begged him,” she said. “I begged him to think of us. To think of Brett, if he didn’t care about me.”

She seemed to speak only during moments of breath catching, moments of clarity in a murk of sobbing. Susan seemed to understand the pattern.

“What did he say?” Susan said at the right moment.

“He said Brett was lucky his father had connections, he couldn’t get a job by himself.” Her breathing was very short.

Susan nodded. Caroline sobbed, struggling to talk at the same time.

“A job,” she gasped. “As if a job with a dope dealer was a good thing.”

She was panting now and crying and talking in a burst as if she couldn’t wait to get it all said.

“As if having a father who was a dope dealer was a good thing... as if a whore-master was a good thing... as if Brett should grow up and be like him...” Caroline stopped, she seemed almost to be choking. “... to be like him,” she gasped. She slipped from the chair onto her knees on the floor. “LIKE HIM,” she gasped. She had doubled over, her face in her hands, her body rocking.

I looked at Hawk. He had no expression. I looked at Susan. She was watching Caroline. The force of her concentration was almost palpable.

“Did Bailey have an affair?” Susan said.

Caroline nodded without ceasing to rock, doubled over on her knees on the floor.

“Did he work with Esteva?”

Caroline nodded again.

“Who did he have an affair with?”

Caroline stopped rocking and raised her face toward Susan, a look of amazement on her face. As if Susan had asked her which way was up. Her voice was suddenly clear.

“Emmy,” she said. “Emmy Esteva.” Who could not know that?

“That was painful,” Susan said.

Caroline nodded.

“How did you deal with it?”

“I tried, I tried to be a woman he would want, to live up to what he expected...”

“That’s hard,” Susan said. “Isn’t it?”

Caroline nodded again.

“Too hard,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“So what did you do?”

Caroline shook her head.

“Did you have any help?” Susan said.

“Not for a long time,” Caroline said. “Finally I told Dr. Wagner.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “What did you tell him?”

Caroline looked horrified. “Not about Bailey,” she said. “Just about feeling depressed and that there was some trouble in the family.”

Susan nodded.

“And Dr. Wagner sent me to see a social worker at the hospital,” Caroline said.

There was a moment of silence while the snow drifted against the windows in the living room.

“Who?” Susan said.

“A young Hispanic woman,” Caroline said. “Miss Olmo.”

“How often did you see her?”

“Once a week for about three months.”

“And you told her about Bailey?”

“Not at first,” Caroline said. “But Miss Olmo said if she was going to help me she had to have my trust.”

“Of course,” Susan said.

“So I told her everything.”

Susan nodded again. “Did you tell anyone else about Bailey?”

“Oh, my God, no,” Caroline said. “No one.”

I glanced at Hawk, leaning on the doorjamb with the shotgun. He was glancing at me.

“The thing is,” Caroline said, “even after I told her, it didn’t help. Now it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late,” Susan said. “And it will take longer than three months.”

“Until what?” Caroline said.

“Until you look forward to morning,” Susan said.

Caroline shook her head.

“Yes,” Susan said. “I’ll help you. He’ll help you. You don’t believe it now, but it will get better.”

Caroline said nothing. She simply sat and stared out the front window at the snow sifting lightly down through the darkness outside her house.

32

Hawk drove and I sat beside him with the shotgun. The snow was still gentle and there were pauses in its fall as if it were deciding whether to be a blizzard.

“I come out here to whack a couple of dope pushers and I end up in encounter therapy,” Hawk said. “Like hanging out with Dr. Ruth.”

“You’ll get your turn,” I said.