Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

‘Don’t say cunt, dear,’ Helen had said then, appearing behind the child and shunting small arms into the sleeves of a new winter coat. As they followed the maid down the long hallway, Kathy heard Helen’s mother laughing uproariously. She had tried to turn and go back with the intention of beating the old woman to a pulp, but Helen had restrained her. With Helen it usually took no more than a look or the lightest pressure to contain the small and continuous storm that was Kathy Mallory.

Fourteen years later, Mallory was back. Helen was four years in the ground, and she was looking into Helen’s eyes in the ruined face of Alice.

‘I thought you were dead,’ said Alice.

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Mallory.

Are you disappointed, Aunt Alice?

‘But I heard it on the evening news,’ she said, as though she had caught Mallory in a lie. ‘Well, no matter. It’s a bit late to be calling, isn’t it? And I mean that on several levels.’

‘I guess it has been a while,’ said Mallory. ‘I saw you at Markowitz’s funeral.’

On the day they had laid the old man in the ground, she had looked up to see Alice, a ghost of Helen in her likeness, hovering near the open grave. When she had looked back again, the ghost was gone.

‘I thought Helen would’ve wanted a member of the family there,’ said Alice. ‘I thought she would have liked that.’

‘She would have. Thank you.’

‘You haven’t changed so much since you were a little girl, but then, you never looked like a little girl. Your eyes were always more like an adult’s. What a disturbing child you were. Violent, rude, uncivilized.’

Mallory said nothing, took no offense; it was all true.

‘I know where you live now, Kathy. Only a few blocks from here, isn’t it? That condominium must have been very expensive. And I imagine the maintenance fees are rather high. Why are you here? You want money, I suppose.’

‘I don’t need money.’

‘Then what do you want?’ Alice leaned forward with a new intensity, a sudden burst of light in the watering blue irises. ‘What could you possibly want from me?’ Her voice was rising, wavering in the high notes, close to breaking. ‘You took my sister away from me! Did you know she never spoke to me again? Did you know how much I loved Helen?’

Alice rose out of her chair. The effort seemed to tax her. Was Alice dying of the same cancer that killed Helen? She looked thin and weary.

Alice’s supply of venom was exhausted. She sank down to the cushion of the chair and deeper. She cried, and Mallory waited it out, neither offering aid nor withdrawing, only waiting for it to be over with.

‘Why did you come? What do you want from me?’

‘I need your help.’

‘The Coventry Arms has quite a mix of people these days. The rock stars have loud parties, and so do the political people,’ said the old woman who must be in her late eighties.

‘There’s a television personality in the building and an actor,’ said the old woman’s husband, who had been introduced to Mallory as Ronald Rosen.

Mrs Rosen nodded. ‘It’s true. In my day, they would never allow theater people in a nice building.’

‘In your day, Hattie,’ said her husband, ‘gangsters were the aristocracy of the West Side.’ The old man turned to Mallory. ‘When I was a kid, we came up out of Hell’s Kitchen, same as your mother’s people. What a time to be alive. When I was a boy, I ran errands for Owney Madden, the Duke of the West Side. I saw two of his men shot down in the bootleg whiskey wars.’

Mallory was drinking tea out of a fragile china cup and facing the elderly Rosens, residents of the Coventry Arms. Alice leaned over and replenished the tea from an antique silver pot.

‘So you’re Helen’s daughter,’ said Mr Rosen. ‘You must take after your father’s side.’ Mrs Rosen kicked his shoe and he knew he had said something wrong, but not what. Apparently, it didn’t matter, for his wife resumed her good-natured smile.

‘We watched Helen grow up in this apartment, didn’t we, Alice?’ said Mrs Rosen. ‘Though we didn’t see her but three or four times after she married Louis Markowitz. I was at her funeral. What’s it been, Alice, three, four years since Helen died?’ Mrs Rosen turned back to Mallory. ‘I saw you there. I didn’t want to intrude. I spoke to Louis Markowitz in the reception line. He seemed like such a…’ She shot a look at Alice. ‘Oh, but I’m going on.’

‘Is Mallory your married name?’ asked Mr Rosen, who was again shown the error of his ways by a kick from Mrs Rosen, who undoubtedly knew the facts from Alice.

‘This is so exciting,’ said Hattie Rosen. ‘Just like television. Do you want us to use assumed names?’

‘Good idea,’ said Mallory. ‘And I’ll need a letter for the concierge – something to explain why I’m living in your condo.’

‘Of course,’ said Mr Rosen. ‘And we should say something about it to Arthur. He’s our doorman. I don’t like lying to Arthur.’

‘Stick with the truth,’ said Mallory. ‘But keep it simple. Tell him you’re leaving on urgent personal business, and I’m a friend of the family. I’ll take care of the lies.’

‘Did I mention that Ronald snores?’ asked Mrs Rosen. ‘We have separate bedrooms.’

‘My condo is a two bedroom with a view of the river and a 24-hour doorman,’ said Mallory. ‘Are there a lot of people in your building with personal computers?’

‘Everyone has a computer now – even us,’ said Mrs Rosen. ‘They wired the entire building for an electronic bulletin board.’

‘My wife uses the computer,’ said Mr Rosen. ‘What do I know from computers?’

‘So what’s to know? You only have to know where the on-switch is. You push a button and voilá, there’s the bulletin board for the building. You leave notes for the building management and the super, arrange for dog walking, vacation notice. You can even do your banking from the computer if you’re on-line with your bank. Now don’t you be afraid of it, dear. It’s only a machine. And the directions are written on the door of the console. You’ll pick it up easy. Oh, and the girl who cleans comes once a week. She has her own key, but you can trust her with your life. Sarah, I think. Ronald, is that her name? Sarah?’

‘I can move in tomorrow?’

‘Yes, but we have to be back in ten days for my cousin Bitsy’s golden wedding anniversary. We’ve invited a hundred people, dear. You understand. Now about your condo – it’s wired for cable TV?’

When the arrangements for the exchange of apartments had been completed, when the Rosens had gone, and she and Alice had said their strained good nights, Mallory was on her way to the door, passing slowly through the rooms of the apartment where Helen had grown up, taking in each detail.

She passed near the grand piano, which was covered with a tapestry throw and photographs, perhaps fifty, in small, ornate frames. All the faces were children’s. The portraits to the rear were dated by the clothing, and in front were the children only recently come to abide on the piano. Mallory found Helen’s photograph as a girl. It was placed toward the back with the children who had grown up and grown old. She picked it up and stared at Helen’s young face.

She was setting the picture back in its place when her hand froze, and her eyes locked on a frame in the middle rows. She recognized her own likeness staring out of the sea of brand-new eyes. It was a school photograph, taken a full year after the visit.

Her own portrait had neither pride of place, nor was it hidden, but fit well into its proper station among the generations, the family.

Riker made his way up the stairs of the animal hospital and into a wide waiting room the size of an auditorium. A pet shop smell mingled with odors of cleaning solvents, and a cacophony of barks and chirps emanated from every row of seats. Pet owners crooned to their jiggling, meowing, howling carrier boxes. Others clutched leashes, holding back dogs who would rather be elsewhere. The human noises were choruses of ‘poor baby’ and all its variations. These people, perhaps a hundred of them, were serious animal lovers.