Bank Robbers (27 page)

“Bank robbery is not something to be proud of.”

“Neither is adultery.” He stared at his son's eyes, and they shifted uneasily away.

“She is going to send you back to jail.”

“Well, then you'll have the business all to yourself and you won't have to worry about me fencing on the side.”

Moe shook his head and looked back at him. “I prefer the fencing.”

“And besides, why do you care so much all of a sudden? I'll sign the whole bloody thing over to you, if that's what you're worried about.”

“I'm not worried about owning the business.” Moe's voice dropped.

Dottie put her hand on the hall closet doorknob and as quietly and, as slowly as she could, turned it. She opened it a crack, trying to remember if it creaked. She could just reach her coat sleeve. She placed her hand on the shoulder and pulled it off the hanger. She pulled it around her shoulders and then, closing the closet, reached for the front door.

She began to feel the growing lump ache in her throat, and it was in direct proportion as to how far the door was opening. She was going back out there alone. She didn't know if she was going to give herself up; she just needed to get on a train or a bus someplace and think it through. She felt the rush of air, and then the words, “Did you hear something?”

Dottie's legs took off under her, and she was running and running, and to her horror she looked down and realized she was leaving a trail of money.

“Hey! Wait a minute. Dottie! Moe, go after her,” she heard Arthur shout, and almost immediately there was the heavy weight of a hand on her shoulder and she was pulled back by Moe.

“Let me go.”

“Wait,” Moe said.

“No, no, you're right and he's wrong. I can't stay around him.”

“Wait.”

“Let me go, won't you? He'll just talk me into coming back, and you're right, I don't want him to have to do any more jail time.”

“Dottie—” She heard Arthur behind her.

“But Arthur, he's right. You shouldn't be in jeopardy because I want to go to jail.”

“You
want
to go to jail?” Moe asked.

“Dottie, be quiet.”

“Great, so she's senile
and
crazy. I told you,” Moe tossed off, and Dottie suddenly turned and gaped at him.

She felt herself begin to breathe hotly. There was a tightness in her chest, and the thought “How dare you!” was shrieking through her head.

“Senile? That's what you think? I'm senile! You listen to me. I'm a not some crazy old woman like they said on television. I am angry.” Dottie took a step toward him, and felt his anger explode. “I finally got sick and tired of settling for nothing because that's what they told me I had to do. And I did it. I settled for nothing, the way I have every day for thirty lousy years. Your father was one of those things I settled myself out of. I have wasted my own life. And if I had to think back on all the things in life I've cheated myself out of and been cheated out of, I wouldn't have robbed a bank. I'd have taken a machine gun and let her rip in the middle of Times Square! Do you hear me, child? So I settled for robbing a bank. And do you know what? I did a good job. I got away with it. And the hell with them all for the tongue-in-cheek remarks and laughing at me because I'm not some kid. I took something back. I took back my dignity, and I did it alone. I'm not crazy, I'm fed up!”

“Dottie,” Arthur whispered, and he pulled her into him and gave her a long deep kiss.

When Arthur finally let go of her she stared up at him and then at his lips and a small smile spread across her lips, and her eyes had that same serious thoughtful expression that they'd had the night before.

“Arthur MacGregor, will you run away with me?”

“Oh, my God,” she heard Moe mutter behind her.

“Dottie O'Malley, I will run wherever you want to go.”

She turned and the three of them silently walked up the brick path.

Moe slammed the door. “Just great, just goddamn great.”

“The first thing I have to do is get dressed,” Arthur was saying and Dottie began to go up the stairs.

“Are you kidding? You can't be serious,” Moe began. They both stopped on the stairs and turned with raised eyebrows. “This is not going to work,” Moe said, his hands on his hips.

“Nobody can see her face in those photos. The only reason you figured it out was the shopping bag, and that you picked her up in the village on Friday.”

“You can't just leave—”

“Why? You can't run that god-awful business by yourself? Now, you are going to go back and sit in your house and not say a word about this to anybody, do you hear me, Moe?” Arthur cut him off and took a step down, toward him.

Moe crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I won't just go back and sit in my house.”

“What are you going to do? Turn me in? If you are, it's me alone,” Dottie said, and took a step down as well.

They both stood in silence, staring at Moe, waiting.

“I know you never liked me, Pop. I know we're different people and I could never live up to the great Arthur MacGregor.”

“Aw, Christ, here it comes, another lecture. For God's sake, be a man. Be a human being.”

“I'm trying to, if you'd let me finish.” Moe stared evenly at them.

They stood silently again.

“You can't just leave … without money.”

“We have money.” Arthur began.

“Where are you going?”

“The airport.”

“How are you going to take that bag of cash on an airplane? You can't carry it on. It has to go through the metal detector.”

“Well…” Arthur began to explain it and then stopped himself, and looked curiously at his son.

“You trust enough to send it through with the luggage? Not to mention the fact that your name will appear in their computers. How would that look? There's a robbery and Arthur MacGregor and some woman who matches the description leaves town?” Moe asked and looked at them both. “We'll put the tickets on my card. Nobody's looking for Moe MacGregor.”

Dottie looked down at him, and nodded. “Thank you.” She turned and walked up the stairs. She took one step toward the bedroom and then stopped, turned around and leaned on the railing just to the right above the stairs, and listened.

They both watched her go, and Arthur turned back to Moe, and for the first time in a long time, looked at his son with a bit of admiration.

“I couldn't live the way you chose to, but that doesn't make me nothing, Pop.”

“I never said it did. I never wanted you to be in trouble like me. Hell, if I had, I wouldn't have sent your mother money every month, I wouldn't have footed the bills for college.”

“But you were never around.”

He stared straight into his son's eyes, incredulous. “What? Do you think being on the run from the FBI is a leisurely activity? They were watching your mother for years. I wasn't around because we, your mother and I, agreed that you shouldn't go through life with little men in unmarked cars all around you. Now, I'm not saying I'm a shining example of fatherhood by any stretch of the imagination, but I never lied to you, I never beat you, I never let you starve, and that's a damn sight better than a lot of so-called fathers who are around all the time. Are you the perfect father and husband?”

“I try,” Moe said uneasily.

“Well, isn't that all we can do? We're only human, as little as that counts in this day and age when we're all supposed to march around like kindergarteners in naive perfection. Well, I'm not a child, I'm an adult, and we sometimes screw up.”

“Did you cheat with her on my mother?”

“I hadn't seen Dottie in years when I was with your mother and, no. I never cheated on your mother. I just robbed banks … Dottie and I were very young and we were going to get married, and I went to jail. When I got out I went to find her, because I believed that even though she'd gotten married she would leave her husband. And she didn't. Maybe it was the best choice she could have made and maybe it wasn't.”

Moe's eyes lowered. “She was the one, wasn't she?”

“The one?”

“Mom … sometimes late at night used to talk about a woman. She used to tell me that no one was ever going to have you, because you belonged to someone else. She was the one, wasn't she?”

Arthur kept his eyes on him until Moe raised them. He nodded slowly.

“You make choices in your life, and sometimes they're worth it, and sometimes they're not. The trick is not regretting any of it. And, with the exception of her, I don't.”

Dottie clasped her hands together and straightened up. That was all she wanted to hear.

Moe nodded, and gave a slight smile. Arthur watched him walk into the living room and return with his coat. He put it on, and wrapped a muffler around himself. His hat fell down over his eyes, and he winced and pulled it off.

“God, I hate these things she knits.” He shook his head, and Arthur found himself nodding in agreement.

“I'll be back in an hour, then let me drive you to the airport.”

*   *   *

T
ERESA
opened the old cedar trunk that had sat at the foot of the bed in her bedroom since she'd been married. She could hear Tracy's husband moving about in the kitchen, and the clink of metal utensils as he emptied the silverware into a box.

They had wasted no time packing up her things; her apartment looked like the inside of a moving van. Brown cardboard boxes covered the bed, pictures had been stripped off the walls; the whole place was a mess. And now, as Teresa gingerly pulled a large old garment bag out of the trunk, she could hear Tracy on the phone.

“She finally came to her senses about Florida … Yeah, I know, it's such a relief…”

Teresa laid the gray garment bag out on the bed and unzipped it slowly, so as not to make much noise. She took out Fred's tuxedo, then thumbed through several layers of dresses and suits, until she got to the black one.

Carefully she laid the Chanel suit across the bed. She picked up the jacket and looked at it carefully. It looked brand-new. The skirt was a little worn at the top, but with a blouse no one would even look at it. She opened the closet door and took out a white blouse that looked like the one Dottie had worn for the robbery. She pulled off her housedress and put on the blouse, carefully buttoning it. She inhaled deeply and looked at the skirt.

This was the real test, D-Day.

As she unzipped the skirt, the tag displaying the size eight became visible. As she carefully stepped into the skirt and slid it up to her hips she automatically inhaled, sucked in her stomach and did not exhale. She zipped up the back.

Only then did she exhale. Sharply and gratefully she let the breath out. This was the outfit. The very expensive outfit that she'd worn maybe three times, before she got pregnant. Afterward, she could never fit back into it. Every woman, Teresa thought, has one of these. What she called the too-expensive-to-throw-out outfit. She'd always kept it in the hope that she would lose enough weight to get back into it one day.

This was the day.

Teresa quickly pulled the jacket over the blouse, opened up the closet door, and stared at herself in the mirror.

She always felt like Jackie Kennedy when she wore this outfit. All she needed was a pillbox hat, some white gloves and a handbag. She pushed her feet into her pumps and stared again at herself in the mirror.

Jeez, she thought, maybe I should scrap my plans and find someone to date.

She gave an odd chuckle. She wasn't interested in dating. Christ, the very thought made her skin crawl. She'd had Fred. He'd been the match for her, the right man. And once you found that perfect person, nobody else is ever gonna come close. Naw. She didn't need a man, she needed to do what she was about to do. She grabbed her handbag and slowly and silently walked out of the bedroom.

Tracy was still on the phone as Teresa passed without looking at her.

“And so I said—Ma! Ma, look at you. What're you all dressed up for?”

Teresa opened the front door to the apartment and stared at Tracy. Behind her she could hear Fred, Jr., stop moving about.

“Church,” she snapped.

“You ain't been to a Sunday church service since we were kids,” Tracy said suspiciously.

“Well, I think I better go say good-bye to Father Dominick, then,” Teresa said.

For just one second she thought Tracy was going to give her a hard time or, worse, offer to go with her. But she watched Tracy shrug after a moment, and place the phone back up to her ear.

“Have a good time,” Teresa heard her say as she descended the stairs.

Yeah, she thought, I'm gonna have a hell of a time where I'm going.

*   *   *

D
OTTIE
stared out the car window. The sun was low in the sky. She heard the continual sounds of planes taking off, and watched them rise in the smoggy air, as the car got off the ramp at Kennedy Airport. The sky was yellow and the sunset had a layer of blue-red, and reminded her, grotesquely of the center of a raw piece of meat.

She stared at the back of Moe's head as he drove, and listened to Arthur go over the business accounts—bills due, the taxes, et cetera—and she thought about sitting in the kitchen of Arthur's house and looking back over the garden. She wondered what it would be like in the peak of summer. And for a brief moment she had a vision of a warm afternoon, and kneeling in a vegetable patch, and listening to Arthur's grandchildren run under a sprinkler on the lawn. And she'd look up at him sitting on the porch reading the Sunday papers, and drinking iced tea … and the thing was, it was a vision she'd had a long long time ago.

Her eyes refocused on the terminal signs for Kennedy Airport. Well, there weren't going to be any vegetable gardens or lazy afternoons with grandchildren. And she wondered, would anyone care for the garden? And the house. It was a wonderful house. Such a waste. She looked at Arthur. To her it was a waste to leave such a lovely house. To him it didn't seem to matter in the least.