Round Robin (25 page)

“What if some women were eyeing Charlie the way these guys are eyeing you? How’d you feel about that?”

Nancy put a hand on Robin’s shoulder.

“Eyeing and being eyed are permissible,” she said. “The occasional flight of fancy is okay, too. It all makes for high self-esteem and a strong heartbeat. And just between you and me, when a man thinks he’s hot stuff and he brings it on home to Mama, why, Mama usually has a pretty good time. Especially when she knows she’s hot stuff, too.”

With that, Nancy whacked Robin on the butt and said it was time to get to work.

Robin out-lifted Nancy in every area. Chest, shoulders, arms and legs.

She out-lifted Nancy in terms of sheer weight, that was. But not by much, given Robin’s considerable advantage in size. And when it came to the number of repetitions in each exercise, Nancy did more. For the first time, Robin got to see just how strong her sister actually was, how she kept her body in such fantastic shape, and how she had the iron will to make that last rep that Robin never would have thought she could manage.

At the end, both of them were sweating buckets and the gym felt anything but chilly.

As they showered, Robin caught Nancy looking at her. Until then, Robin had largely lost all sense of being self-conscious. Now, she felt very ... vulnerable. In a way she hadn’t felt for many years.

But Nancy just smiled and said, “You’re really going to be something.”

Business at the deli was slack again the next day and, as promised, Mimi decided to close up shop and send everyone home until January 2. Fortunately for Robin, before she left, Nancy called. When Nancy heard the deli was closing, she took time off work, too. She could afford to; people didn’t buy many condos over the holidays, either.

At Nancy’s suggestion, they went clothes shopping. Robin agreed to the idea because she realized she couldn’t always count on a man donating his overcoat to make her presentable.

As they walked along Michigan Avenue, Robin asked, “Why’d you call Mimi’s today? You keeping an eye out for me?”

Nancy laughed.

“Actually, I had a real yen for some of Manfred’s strudel. I was hoping there might be a scrap tucked away in a corner of your fridge somewhere.”

“Fat chance.”

They walked along for a block in companionable silence.

“You know, I actually miss that little snot,” Nancy said.

“Who? Bianca?”

“Yeah. She was actually a good little worker. She was cooking up some scam she was going to unload on all of us sooner or later — all that curtsying crap was a dead giveaway — but until then she was a real help around the office. I think I might even have been bringing her along just a little, too ... helping to make a normal kid out of her.”

Robin, who hadn’t missed Bianca at all, kept quiet.

Nancy looked at her.

“Kids take a lot of work. You can’t write them off too quickly.”

“I don’t think I have to worry about Bianca anymore.”

“Not just her, any kid.”

This was very sensitive ground for Robin. Nancy was probably the only person in the world who could approach it even obliquely.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be in the market for maternity clothes, either.”

“You never know.”

Robin didn’t want to discuss the matter — and she didn’t want to get into an argument with Nancy after things between them had been going so well lately. So she changed the subject to something that really concerned her, a problem with a lot more here-and-now to it.

“I’ve got something that’s been bothering me,” she said.

“What?”

“Well ... you know how I’m buying out Mimi little by little?”

“Yeah.”

Robin stared straight ahead.

“I’m not sure I want to anymore.”

Nancy stopped dead in her tracks and stared at Robin in disbelief.

“What?”

“Yeah. When you came over Christmas Eve and made that crack about me serving cold-cuts all day, for just a moment there, I got a real flash that I’d like to be a vegetarian. Never look at another piece of meat in my life.”

There was a faint ring of truth in those words, but Nancy’s keen ear was still listening for the real reason, the fanfare of trumpets that had yet to sound.

“What else?” she asked.

“Have you heard that Tone Morello is on the radio now?”

Nancy nodded.

“My boys listen to Iggy Gross on the sly ... until I catch them at it and ask them if they’d like to hear someone talking about their mother the way that creep talks about women. That shames them away from him for a few days.”

Robin was surprised that Nancy’s sons did anything of which she didn’t approve, but then her life had been full of surprises lately. But that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about now.

“You know what Ant-knee’s act is?”

“Unh-uh, I never listen that long.”

“He’s pretending I’ve castrated him, metaphorically, and good old Iggy’s going to make a man of him again.”

Nancy snorted.

“It’s sick,” Robin said. “I can’t imagine how someone could humiliate himself publicly that way ... but I can’t help feeling I’m responsible for it.”

“You’re feeling sorry for Tone Morello?”

“No. I guess I’m feeling sorry for myself. I think I’m getting tired of cracking wise after all these years — maybe in my own way I’ve damaged as many people as Ant-knee has — but I haven’t left myself anywhere else to go.”

That, Nancy knew, was the trumpet fanfare.

“You think that could actually happen?” Robin asked. “That I could get tired of cutting people down?”

Nancy shrugged.

“Charlie says that every pitcher loses his fast ball.”

Robin looked at her sister bleakly.

“Next time I need advice, I’ll try a fortune cookie.”

Nancy laughed.

“Good to know you haven’t lost your mean streak entirely.”

Robin grinned.

“No, but it ain’t what it used to be.”

“Which is why God gives us comforts like shopping in our declining years. Let’s go.”

And with that Nancy led Robin off to Neiman-Marcus.

Despite her denials, Robin knew that Nancy had been putting herself out the past week, keeping Robin company in Manfred’s absence, keeping her spirits from plummeting into the holiday blues. But on New Year’s Eve Nancy had a standing date with Charlie that took priority. Every year, even when their boys were little, the two of them booked a suite at the fanciest hotel they could afford, which by now was the Ritz-Carlton, and they did their best to recreate the excitement of the first night they slept together, which had also been a New Year’s Eve.

Nancy had once confided to Robin that this meant they would have sex the same number of times they did when they were eighteen. She never revealed just what that number was, but she told Robin that Charlie took the challenge very seriously, trained for it like a marathon, and so far, even though he was over forty, he hadn’t come up short.

Sweetheart that he was, Charlie had asked Robin if she’d like to join them for a drink at the hotel bar before he and Nancy retired to their suite for the night. Robin had declined, thanking him for the offer. She said she would be just fine.

It hadn’t even bothered Robin when Nancy had shared the rumor with her that Mom and Dad might be spending the night together somewhere themselves. Robin still found her parents’ divorce-cum-reconciliation incomprehensible, but tonight it didn’t disturb her.

For some reason she couldn’t yet identify, she was beginning to feel at peace with herself. After she’d gone shopping with Nancy, she’d even let her sister persuade her to get her hair professionally styled. Nothing fancy. Just a short simple cut that parted on the left and framed her face nicely.

Robin had drawn the line at a manicure. She didn’t see herself with painted nails whatever became of her. She had held out against eye makeup and lipstick, too. She was who she was, and she was coming to appreciate that over the years a certain strength had been etched in her features. She’d never see herself as a beauty, but she suspected that someday she might be handsome.

She did have lovely deep blue eyes, and now they were picked up by the smart indigo track suit that Nancy had picked out to replace her baggy gray sweats. Buttressed by a pair of brilliantly white running shoes, Robin felt the picture of athletic elegance.

Not bad for someone who’d been a confirmed couch potato only two months earlier.

She gave her hair a fluff before the bathroom mirror and admired the way it settled artfully back into place. She grabbed a bottle of champagne, a crystal flute and a boom box loaded with a big-band cassette and headed down to her park to ring in the New Year.

At that moment her doorbell began to ring.

Insistently.

Chapter 23

Bianca stood in the outer hallway sobbing hysterically, one thumb pressed firmly against Robin’s doorbell and the other against Manfred’s. She stopped when she noticed Robin’s approach, but it took a moment and several rapid, tear-clearing blinks before Bianca realized who Robin was. Then she began crying again and shrieking in German.

“Der riesig.”
The giant, she demanded.
“Der riesig!”

With Bianca was a cabbie, whose taxi was double-parked outside, and whose expression said he had great regrets about the sticky situation in which he found himself.

He pleaded, “Lady, I hope you can help me out here. Please tell me you’re this kid’s mother. Or at least you know her.”

Robin opened the door and Bianca streaked past her. She tried the door to the basement apartment she’d shared with Manfred. It was locked. Bianca turned beseeching eyes to Robin.

“He’s gone,” she said.

The child looked stricken.

Then she ran up the stairs, tried the park’s door, found it unlocked and bolted inside.

Robin turned to look at the cabbie. He held his hands up defensively.

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t touch her, I swear.”

“Tell me what happened,” Robin said.

“Yeah, right.” The cabbie ran his right hand over his face as he recalled. “I was out at O’Hare. It’s a good night, New Year’s Eve. You get a lotta happy drunks who tip big.”

Robin gave the man a frown.

“Okay, okay. Anyway, I’m waiting at the international terminal hoping to pick up some guy who’s been getting loaded the past ten hours crossing the ocean or something and out comes this little girl. I figure, okay, Mom and Pop’ll be along any second ... but, no, the kid just shuts the door and gives me an address. I think to myself, ‘Wait a minute here.’ But she hands me a double-sawbuck and says her father will pay the rest when I get her to the address. I ask where she’s been. She says Germany and without batting an eye shows me her passport. I looked at the picture and it was her, all right. So, I think, maybe I don’t let my kids fly around the world by themselves, but maybe other people do. And the kid has given me money up front, she knows where she wants to go, she’s polite, cute as a button. So where’s the harm taking her home to poppa? The guy does live here, doesn’t he?”

“What happened??” Robin asked. “When did the hysterics start?”

“We’re on the Kennedy, right? Heading into town. Everything is peaches and cream. All of a a sudden the kid shrieks, liked to curdle my blood, almost shot me across the divider into oncoming traffic. Then she starts babbling, in German I guess since that’s where she just came from. I get my cab back into just one lane and look over my shoulder. I say, ‘Kid, kid, calm down. Tell me what’s the matter.’ She just babbles on and points to this car behind us.”

“What kind of a car?”

“A big black shiny Mercedes, the kind you and me would dream of having, but the kid acts like it’s some monster out to gobble her up. Then she looks at me, babbles some more and then, out of the blue, in perfect English, she yells, ‘Faster, goddamnit!’ I figured at that point a speeding ticket was the least of my worries so I hauled ass. The Mercedes was out of sight, but the kid kept looking back like it was after us or something. But I swear I haven’t seen it since I hit the gas. And now we’re here ...” He took a deep breath. “ ...and I still got twenty-three dollars owing on the meter.”

Robin went upstairs and got the money to pay the man, including a generous tip.

Then she went into her park.

Knowing that her New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be as she’d planned it.

Bianca was at the back of the park, hiding behind a clump of ferns and schefflera. As she heard Robin approach, she carefully parted the leaves, revealing one eye like she was a World War II coast-watcher.

Robin decided on a hands-off approach.

She sat on the nearest park bench and waited.

The kid let the leaves fall back into place and effectively disappeared.

After ten minutes, Robin said, “There are three deadbolt locks between you and whatever you’re afraid of.”

After another few minutes, the kid said something softly in German, and the only thing Robin caught was that word
riesig
that the kid had used before, and she didn’t know what it meant.

“Sorry,” Robin replied. “You’ll have to speak English.”

“The giant,” Bianca said, the disapproval clear in her tone that Robin hadn’t mastered the German language in the week she’d been away.

“Your father?”

After several seconds a soft yes issued from behind the plant.

“He’s on a retreat at a monastery in Wisconsin.”

All of which meant nothing to Bianca.

“Is that bad?” she asked.

“Only if he doesn’t come back.”

“He’s not coming back?” she asked with alarm.

Robin knew she better be careful; the kid was still on the edge of hysterics.

“He’ll be back. Probably in a day or two.”

Though, for a fact, Robin didn’t know that it might not be for another week.

The leaves parted and the kid peered out at her again. For quite a while.

“You look more
weiblich.”

“Yeah,” Robin said.
“Weiblich
is the look I was going for.”

The kid came out from around the clump of greenery and took a seat at the far end of the bench. She kept staring at Robin, but didn’t say anything.

“You want to tell me about it?” Robin asked.

The kid shook her head.

“Are we safe here?” she asked.

Robin nodded.

Then Robin said, “Of course, if I knew what we needed to be safe from, I might take some extra precautions.”

Bianca considered that.

She informed Robin, “I have run away from my mother.”

Robin nodded again.

“Who did you think was in the black Mercedes?”

The kid started to bolt for her hidey-hole, but on impulse Robin caught her wrist and pulled her close.

She looked down at Bianca and said, “Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to get to you without going through me ... and we
hags
are a tough bunch.”

Despite her troubles, Bianca blushed.

Robin kept a straight face.

“I may not speak German yet, but I heard
hexe
enough to look it up in my new dictionary.”

Bianca looked away and said, “You do not look like so much of a hag now.”

“Kind of you to say.”

Robin released Bianca’s wrist, half-expecting her to run, but she stayed where she was. Robin looked at her. She hadn’t come back with blue hair again, but the clothes she wore looked foreign and cheap. Since Warner was nowhere to be seen, and hadn’t figured in the cabbie’s story, she had to assume that the kid had somehow managed to take an international flight by herself. That spoke to Robin not only of incredible moxy but also of extreme desperation.

If the kid didn’t come across with an explanation soon, she was going to have to call Brother Damian and see if there wasn’t some way Manfred could be reached.

The thought had barely crossed Robin’s mind when Bianca began to speak.

“My mother wouldn’t give me any of the gi ... any of my father’s money,” she said softly. “He had paid that money for me, and I was back so at least some of it should have been mine.”

“Was that what mattered to you, the money?” Robin asked.

“How can a woman live without money?” Bianca asked harshly.

“Wasn’t your mother happy to see you?”

A long silence was followed by a small shake of the young girl’s head.

“She had given my room away. The house was making money from that space now. I had to sleep on the pantry floor. I told my mother I would find my own apartment if she gave me my money. I kept asking for it, which made her very angry. Then two nights ago she said I could have my room back. A lot of the girls giggled when she said that.”

A feeling of dread came over Robin.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My mother brought a man to my room. A disgusting old man. She said he was Herr Rausch. He was very wealthy, Mama said. He owned a dozen black Mercedes, four houses and two castles.”

Bianca’s voice had grown small and very far away.

“Did he hurt you?” Robin asked.

“My mother said he wanted to love me. He wanted to take me away in his Mercedes and I would live with him in one of his castles forever ... but first ... first I had to learn some tricks to please him. Herr Rausch would explain the tricks to me, and if I didn’t understand, one of the girls would come in and show me what he wanted.”

Robin felt an urge to kill. That any mother could do this to her child made her blood boil and her mind reel.

“Did you have to do these tricks for him?”

Bianca looked directly at Robin and with tears streaming from her eyes shook her head.

“I did a trick
to
him. One that Geli showed me when I was five. I punched him in his
Geschlechtsteile
. And when he doubled over, I kicked him there. He was in great pain, just the way Geli said a man would be when you do that. But even when he was lying on the floor he looked up at me and said he would make me pay — he would lock me up forever and make me pay every day of my life.”

Robin hugged Bianca close to her.

“And that’s who you thought you saw tonight, in the black Mercedes?”

Robin felt Bianca nod.

“Honey, there are lots of black Mercedes in this town. That wasn’t the bastard you thought it was.”

And Robin quickly reassured herself that it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been the German pervert or the Mercedes would have chased after the taxi.

Still, the story was horrific enough that even after Robin took Bianca upstairs and tucked the kid into her bed, she sat up, on guard, in her living room facing the front door.

With a carving knife in hand and the will to use it firmly in mind.

A carload of singing, shouting drunks roared by at three a.m. and woke Robin from her sleep. She jumped out of her chair and only half-conscious swiveled her head back and forth looking for the source of the threat. It was a moment later that she remembered the knife she held in her hand. Gathering her faculties, she heard the sounds of the drunks diminish as the car moved on down the street. She looked around her apartment and saw that everything was quiet and peaceful.

She walked softly to her bedroom, wondering if the jerks in the car had wakened the kid. Just in case they had, she lowered the knife and hid it behind her leg. It wouldn’t do to have the kid see her enter the room with the knife held high. She’d probably jump right out the window. After all, if her own mother could betray her, who was Robin to be trusted?

But she saw that Bianca had slept right through the uproar.

Robin had left the light on in her closet with the door opened just a crack, and in that sliver of radiance she beheld the face of an angel.

It broke her heart.

She’d dreamed of a face like that for almost twenty years. Dreamed of it but knew she’d never see it. Guaranteed she’d never see it through one blind, tragic, damning act of stupidity ... and, yet, here it was ... the face of an angel.

Tears fell from Robin’s eyes.

Suddenly, the angel’s face was replaced by that of a frightened child. Beneath their closed lids, Bianca’s eyes danced helter-skelter through an onrushing nightmare. She whimpered in fright.

“Nein, nein,”
the little girl whimpered in her sleep.