Laura Lippman: The Most Dangerous Thing

“So many accidents,” she murmurs.

“Yes. It’s a shame about Go-” Gwen stops herself, remembering Sean’s reaction to his brother’s nickname. “Gordon.”

“Oh.” She seems jolted. “Yes, I suppose that was an accident, too.” Supposes? Gwen assumed that Doris Halloran, always the super Catholic, wouldn’t even contemplate the possibility of suicide. Doris lets go of Gwen’s hand abruptly, so abruptly that her body registers the end of the pain as a deepening of the sensation. It’s as if phantom hands still gripped hers, squeezing, intent on hurting her.

“I know it’s a cliché,” Gwen says, “but it throws the world out of whack when a parent loses a child, at any age.”

“Well, I lost a few, you know.” She lowers her voice. “Miscarriages. Three. Actually four, although that one was so early it barely counted.”

Gwen probably did know this in the vague, indifferent way that children intuit things about the grown-ups in their lives, but this revelation suddenly connects a series of mysterious events-Mrs. Halloran “sleeping” a lot, Mr. Halloran yelling at the boys for making noise, a grandmother who came for a visit that wasn’t at all like the grandparent visits Gwen knew. (No meals out, no trips to the toy store.)

“Do you have children. Gwen?”

“Yes, a little girl. Annabelle. She’s five.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Sorry?” Did she think it was a shame to have girls? Or does she know that Annabelle is not Gwen’s biological child? The senior Hallorans were never open-minded people, they would probably call her daughter a Chink or something worse. Gwen’s color rose, she is on the verge of saying that Mrs. Halloran hasn’t done so well herself, that only one of her boys is worth anything. But where are Sean and, come to think of it, Tim?

Doris is suddenly contrite. “I didn’t mean-I’m taking something. The doctor gave me pills. And I feel like things get mixed up, my sentences come out in the wrong order or I say what people say to me. No, it’s good you have a little girl. I’m happy for you. But daughters are hard. Secretive. I was sad I didn’t have one, but then happy. Then again, daughters stay with you. Sons leave. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” No.

Mrs. Halloran grabs her hands again. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“At the funeral? Of course.”

“And at the house, after. Not everyone is invited, but we want you there. You’re like family, even if it’s been years. It’s funny, I s’pose you come back to see your father all the time, yet I never see you. Even when Gordon moved back home, you didn’t come visit him. Why didn’t you visit him?”

So many reasons. Because he was an angry drunk most of the times. And when he wasn’t angry, he was pathetic, self-pitying. But the main reason was the one that divided them long ago: it was simply too painful to be around each other. They couldn’t talk about it, and they couldn’t not talk about it, so they stayed away from each other.

“When Sean moved away, I lost touch. Mickey Wyckoff, too. And my father keeps to himself.”

“Yes, he always did.”

He did? Gwen remembers her father as gregarious. But, perhaps, a little snobbish about the Hallorans. That’s why the night of the hurricane had been unusual, all the parents together in the Robisons’ house, drinking and laughing late into a weekday night.

“Don’t be a stranger now,” Mrs. Halloran says suddenly, full of fake merriment. “We’ll be seeing lots of each other. Right?” The question feels unusually earnest-and a little threatening.

“Absolutely.”

Sean and Tim finally appear, explaining that they have been speaking with the priest about tomorrow’s service. Sean takes his mother by the shoulders, gently, and begins guiding her to other well-wishers, making Gwen feel as if she is in the wrong somehow, that she has monopolized the grieving mother when it was Doris who insisted on prolonging their contact.

Tim gives her a half smile. “Sorry.”

It seems to be the word of the evening. “No need. I think it’s a miracle she’s standing upright.”

“Sean said your dad had an accident?”

“Yes. As I told your mother, that seems to be the theme of the week.”

Tim’s face is blank. It’s funny, how he looks so much like Sean, yet still isn’t handsome. Everything is a bit fuzzier in Tim’s face. Rougher, coarser, indistinct. It’s like a face drawn by a child, the features slashed in. Plus, he’s allowed himself to get plump.

“Go-Go’s death wasn’t an accident, Gwen. He drove right into the Jersey wall at over a hundred miles per hour.”

“Sean said-”

“Oh, Sean. He’s proper now, careful about what he says. Professional liability since he moved to public relations. He can’t stop spinning things. No, Go-Go aimed his car straight at the barricades at the end of the highway. Probably drunk, so it’s hard to know his intent, but he clearly didn’t try to steer away. We’re waiting for the toxicology reports. Well, we’re not waiting for them. The insurance company is, because they’re keen to deny his kids the life insurance if they can. I can’t figure out if we should root for drunk and claim he wasn’t capable of forming suicidal intent or pray for sober and say the accelerator got stuck.”

“I thought he was in a sober phase.”

“He was, best I can tell, right up to last Tuesday night. Went to meetings every week, seemed to be making progress. We only have Mom’s word for it and she forgave him everything, covered for him whenever possible, but he had been clean for almost two years. He left to go to a meeting, in fact, about seven P.M. Next thing Mom knew, it was two A.M. and the cops were at her door. They had gone to Lori’s first, because that was the address on his license.”

“Lori?”

“His ex, although I guess technically they were just separated. The second ex, the one with the kids.” Tim points to two blondes, tiny things. These girls are not inspecting the dead man in the casket but keeping their distance, clinging to their mother. Even in their sadness, all three are gorgeous. “Only decent thing he ever did for her and those kids was taking out that policy and now he might have screwed that up. All he had to do was hit the brakes, leave some skid marks, but no-”

“Shut up, Tim,” Sean says, joining them.

“It’s just Gwen.”

The words are at once warm and vaguely insulting, conferring a privilege while making it sound as if Gwen is a person of no consequence.

“Gordon did not commit suicide.”

“Look, we’re not going to rat him out to the church, keep him from being buried in consecrated ground. And I’m not going to break Mom’s heart. But among the three of us, can’t we at least drop the bullshit?”

“He was drunk. He called me an hour before, wasn’t making any sense.”

“Probably.”

“If he was drunk, then he didn’t know what he was doing. He was drag racing, like in the old days, and he miscalculated.”

“OK, but-we lived here all our lives. We all learned to drive on that patch of dead-end highway. Drunk or asleep or dead, he couldn’t have forgotten that there were barricades, that it ended.”

“Let it go, Tim.”

“Speaking of drinking-anyone want to?”

They end up at the Point, once a reliably sleazy dive on Franklintown Road. To their horror, it has been yuppified. Live music on the weekends, a decent wine list. The bar food is traditional but prepared with care. It isn’t the kind of experience Gwen-or most Baltimoreans with money, or even the city’s pseudohipsters-are inclined to seek out on Franklintown Road, although Gwen realizes she might find it a handy retreat as long as she’s staying in her father’s house.