William Lashner - Marked Man

“Mama,” he said, his cuffed hands rubbing away the tears from his cheek.

“Why wait for them to kill you? I ought kill you myself.”

“Mama. I came to say good-bye.”

She sat up in her bed. “Why good-bye? Where am I going? You never good enough, Charlie, that was problem. You were never smart enough, never strong enough.”

“Mama?”

“Your life nothing but failure.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” said Charlie, bursting out in sobs.

“Now you cry for all you’ve done to me? Now you cry? You think crying, it help? Come here, you failed little fool,” she said, raising both her hands. “Come to your mother, come to me, my little one.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie.

“I know you are.”

“Mommy.”

“Yes, my son. Yes. Shush now and come to me.”

And Charlie, weeping unabashedly now, lay his head on her thin, withered breasts, and she enveloped him with her arms, hugged him and held him close and squeezed him to her as if squeezing the life out of him. Charlie was crying, and Thalassa, off to the side, was crying, and Mrs. Kalakos, with her son now at her breast, was crying, too.

This whole sordid story had started with a plea from a mother to bring her son home, and now the Kalakos family was together again, the scary old woman with her vile, grasping power, the old man who never grew up, the sister off to the side as she seemed always off to the side. I had brought them together, and I was glad. Despite the Kabuki drama we had just passed through, I couldn’t stay dry-eyed at the scene before me. Whatever lay between this family, lines of attraction and repulsion and betrayal that would strangle Freud if he tried to untangle them, the emotion on display right then in that strange, dark room was shockingly pure. I don’t know if there is such a thing as redemption, but when I see something that pure come from a history that rotten, I begin to have greater hope for the fate of the world.

They buried Chantal Adairbeneath a bright summer sun on a sparklingly clear day. The papers said the family wanted a small, intimate ceremony at the cemetery, but the Adairs’ wishes were ignored. The neighborhoods of the Northeast turned out, Frankford and Mayfair, Bridesburg and Oxford Circle, Rhawhnhurst and Tacony, all races, all religions, those too young to have heard the story and those old enough to have forgotten, they all came out to bury a child of the city, one of their own.

Philadelphia has always been better at mourning a child than caring for one.

I stood on the outskirts of the crowd while a priest spoke, and then some guy that looked like Ulysses S. Grant spoke, and then Monica Adair spoke. I was too far away to catch everything, just the rising and the falling of the voices and the occasional punctuated word, but the sense was as clear as the sky that day. Chantal was a gift from God, what had happened to her was a crime that affected the whole of humanity, and now God, who had already wrapped her in his warm embrace, had sent her body home to her family.

I suppose there were oblique references to her murderer in those speeches, but nothing more was necessary. The photographs of Theodore Purcell being led from his Hollywood home in handcuffs were in all the papers and all the tabloids. The producer of Tony in Love and The Dancing Shoes had hired a famous lawyer and was getting the full celebrity-on-trial treatment. His spokesman, one Reginald Winters, stated that Mr. Purcell expected to be acquitted and to produce a fabulous script he had recently acquired. You could almost see the glee in Teddy’s face as the paparazzi snapped his photograph. Was he in trouble? You bet he was. But he was also back in the game, baby.

Charlie Kalakos couldn’t attend the funeral because he was in protective custody. Joey Pride decided against attending, saying that after what he had done, and the quiet he had kept, he wasn’t entitled to mourn with the family. But I wasn’t alone among the crowd as they lowered the tiny coffin into the ground. Zanita Kalakos had insisted on coming with me. She had risen like a specter from her bed, had been carried down the stairs by her surprisingly strong daughter, and was now in a wheelchair by my side.

“Take me to the family,” she said when the ceremony was over.

I glanced at my watch. “I can’t, I’m late,” I said. “This took longer than I thought.”

“You be good boy and take me, now. I need speak to family of that girl. It is obligation.”

I tried to protest, but she shut off my protestations with a wave of her hand. I didn’t even pretend to be strong enough to stand up to that old lady and her obligations. Slowly, I pushed her wheelchair down the path toward the tent.

There was a line, of course there was. I glanced again at my watch and tried to push my way ahead – cripple coming through – but it didn’t work. We were forced to wait as young and old and strangers and friends, as a cascade of mourners paid their respects.

Finally we were under the tent, crossing between the still-open grave and the row where sat the Adairs. I had expected to see dark glasses and reddened noses, I had expected to see the faces of a family deep in mourning, but that’s not what I saw. The Adairs seemed calm, almost cheerful, as if the cloud of sadness and uncertainty they had been living with for more than a quarter of a century had suddenly dissipated and let the sun inside. Mrs. Adair seemed calmer, with some bloom to her cheeks; Mr. Adair’s posture had changed, as if his shoulders had suddenly grown lighter.

“Oh, Victor, there you are,” said Mrs. Adair, standing to greet me and give me a bright hug. “We’re so glad you came. Thank you for everything. Monica just keeps talking and talking about you.”

“I bet she does,” I said.

“It’s going to be hard maintaining a long-distance relationship,” said Mr. Adair as he shook my hand, “but I’m sure you kids will work it out.”

“Long-distance?”

“Introduce me,” said Mrs. Kalakos, interrupting our conversation.

I stepped back at the order. “Mrs. Adair, Mr. Adair,” I said. “I’d like you to meet Zanita Kalakos. This is Charlie Kalakos’s mother.”

Mrs. Adair looked down at the withered crone, and her face went slack as it decided which emotion to display. After a long moment of indecision, she smiled warmly and bent to take the old woman’s hand.

“I wanted to say,” said Mrs. Kalakos, “that I am so sorry that my son, he was part of what happened to your lovely daughter.”

“How long was your son away, Mrs. Kalakos?”

“Fifteen years I not see my boy.”

“I know how hard that was.”

“I know you do, my darling.”

“I’m glad for you he’s back.”

“Yes, I can see that. But I want you should know, part of my son, maybe best part, is in grave with your daughter.”

“I think I understand, Mrs. Kalakos,” said Mrs. Adair. “And thank you for coming, it means more than you might know.”

“Be at peace, both of you,” said Mrs. Kalakos.

When they were finished, I slowly pushed Mrs. Kalakos down the line of family. Richard Adair was sitting next to his father, his face set in some strange fixed expression while his eyes bounced like Superballs in his skull. He was pale and out of place in a suit way too tight, but he was out of the house, which I suppose was a start.

“Richard,” I said with a nod.

“Yo, Victor.”

“How you doing?”

“How you think?”

“It gets easier.”

“What the hell do you know about it?”

“Only that it gets easier.”

“Well, doesn’t that just make it all worthwhile,” he said.

When we reached Monica, she threw her arms around my neck and whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” in my ear. She was dressed that day in her scrubbed, college-girl look, and I must say it felt entirely too good to feel her so close.