Extra Credit (3 page)

“And she did that?”

“Not really,” he said. “She tried to find him but gave up after a while. Then he turned up a week or so ago.”

“What happened? Why did he leave?” There had to be a reason. No one just up and leaves his entire family, never to be heard of for years. At least no one in my family does that; my entire extended family still lives in Canada, my father being the only guy with a traveling jones—and even he didn’t get that far, settling about eight hours due south in New York State.

“From what we could piece together, things went sour quickly for Chick. Lost his job, divorced his wife, maybe other things?” I could feel Crawford shake his head. “Who knows? It was right after 9/11, so I really wasn’t all that concerned with where Chick Stepkowski had ended up. I was more concerned with…”

“Moving on?” I asked.

He remained silent. We had never spoken of that day, and I wondered if we ever would. He had spent time at Ground Zero, and aside from a comment every now and again, I had no details beyond the fact that he never wanted to speak of it in any detail ever.

“What was his business?” I asked.

Crawford chuckled. “You’ll never believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Porta-potties.”

“Really.”

“Really.” He shifted a little, moving his arm out from under my shoulder. “He married into the business and did okay for himself, but it was kind of a joke in the family.”

The click of nails on the hardwood floor announced Trixie’s arrival. She fell heavily on the floor next to Crawford’s side of the bed, letting out an odiferous exhale that smelled suspiciously of leftover chicken. I waited for a few minutes and thought that Crawford had fallen asleep, but he started talking again.

“I thought we’d never see him again. This is just weird.”

“And what is a Sassy?” I asked.

“The ex-wife.”

“Her name was Sassy?”

“Yep,” he said, but I could tell that he was drifting off and the conversation was ending.

It wasn’t the name I would choose for any of our maybe eventual children—the jury was still out on them after the kids that I had encountered that evening—or even any future pets, but I tended to go for the more mundane and Christian when it came to the naming of living beings. That’s how my first goldfish, won for me by my father at the annual fire department carnival, had ended up with the name Frances Xavier. Also how the turtle that I eventually killed through neglect had been called John the Baptist.

The silence stretched on, and this time I realized he had fallen asleep for good. I detached myself from his arms and turned toward the window, watching the rain pelt the screen, feeling the cool, moist air coat my face. I don’t know how long it took, but soon I was asleep, too, in a slumber that was dreamless, soundless, and devoid of the stress of the day.

*   *   *

The next morning, Crawford and I finished cleaning up the kitchen, still a mess from the night before. As soon as the last load of dirty dishes was loaded into the dishwasher, we headed to the backyard. It was a gorgeous autumn day, the sky blue, the air mild, the rain from the night before having taken with it the humidity that had lingered the previous week. Using the leftover vodka, somehow hidden from Chick and Paulie, I mixed up a pitcher of Bloody Marys and brought them to where Crawford had divided up the Sunday papers and left my favorite sections, the book review and Arts and Entertainment, on the chaise lounge beside his. I handed him a drink. “Where’re the chips?” I asked, the one item I had charged him with bringing outside.

He looked at me sheepishly. “Inside?”

I launched myself off the chaise and went back inside, muttering about having to do everything myself, sending a boy to do a man’s job, etc. I was just about to return to the comfort of the chaise when the phone rang.

To answer or not to answer? That was the question. I considered the phone, ringing away on the wall, and decided to ignore it. By the time I got outside, however, Crawford’s phone, always tucked into the front pocket of his jeans, was ringing, seconds after the house phone had stopped. When he answered, I knew it was Christine.

“Sure. Come by,” he said. “We’re just sitting here having a drink.”

Christine had moved to Connecticut upon her return to the States, so it didn’t take her long to get to our house in Westchester. She was alone when she arrived, looking sheepish about bothering us on a tranquil Sunday after the raucous goings-on of the night before.

I held up my half-empty glass. “Bloody Mary?” I asked.

“No, thanks. I’m on my way to take Meaghan for a mani/pedi. I promised both girls some quality time,” she said, taking a seat at the picnic table. “I just wanted to talk to you about the money.”

Crawford sat forward on the chaise lounge. “What about it?”

“Well, what to do with it,” she said. “I’m sorry I took off before we could really discuss it.”

Crawford shrugged. “Nothing to discuss. First chance I get, I’m bringing it back to Chick. Where’s he living exactly?”

She gave us an address in a not-very-desirable section of Mount Vernon, a small city a bit south of us. She sighed. “Of all my brothers, Chick was the one I thought would end up on the straight and narrow. The rest of them?” She looked at Crawford. “Now that’s a different story.”

“I remember,” he said. “Those guys were the embodiment of the Dead End Kids.”

She smiled. “So you know what I mean,” she said. “It seemed like things were going well until … well … you know.”

“He left.” It didn’t need to be said, but he said it anyway.

She looked down at the patio. “Yeah.”

“He was gone a long time,” Crawford said.

“Did he leave right after losing his job? After his marriage fell apart?” I asked. Christine and I shared Crawford, and in turn, he shared everything with me. I didn’t think it was impolite to let on that I knew what had gone on with her troubled brother.

“We guess he did, but we don’t know.” Anticipating my next question, she said, “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going or for how long. He was just gone.”

I didn’t intend to make a sound, but I did. In that sound was my disbelief that they had not seen him for over ten years, yet he had turned up all of a sudden, out of the blue, without any warning whatsoever, or any explanations.

“We looked for him,” Christine said, a little defensive, “but he was gone. We knew he was okay, so we didn’t pursue it. You can’t make someone come back. You can’t make them do something they don’t want to do.”

I looked at Crawford, incredulous. Did this sound as weird to him as it did to me? Or did everyone just expect that given whatever emotional state he had been in, Chick had left town and everything he had here with the intention of not returning? Maybe he didn’t want to be found, but it sounded like they hadn’t looked very hard, either. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to.

“You’re looking at me like you don’t agree with how we handled this,” Christine said.

I was going to try to be as tactful as possible, a strategy I would have to employ a lot more if it meant peace with my husband’s ex-wife. “I wasn’t in your position, Christine. I don’t know what I would have done.”

The damage was done; she was hurt. “Yes, you do. By the way you’re talking, you’re thinking that you would have moved heaven and earth to find him.” She shook her head. “Trust me. He didn’t want to be found.”

“Crawford said you got a call not long after he left. Did you hear from him at all after that?” I asked.

“One letter,” she said. She opened her purse, a soft leather satchel, and pulled out a worn and tattered letter, one that she had obviously kept with her the entire time he was gone. She waved it toward Crawford. “You already saw this.”

He nodded.

“I just don’t want to rock the boat,” she said. “You know … about the money.”

“I’ll handle it, Christine. I know how happy you are that he’s back.” Crawford reached over and patted her leg with a familiarity that made me just a wee bit uncomfortable, but I let it go. They had a lot of history. That’s what I told myself.

She stood and looked up at the sky and then at me. “Life is really strange, you know?”

Did I know? I could write a book about my exploits that nobody would believe. I smiled to show her that I did know. I thought we were done, but she surprised me by bursting into tears. It was my turn to jump up and comfort her.

“This is not the family I would have chosen for myself,” she said. “Or for anyone, for that matter. But it’s the one I got.”

I didn’t have a family to speak of anymore, being an only child and having lost both of my parents far sooner than I should have. Before Crawford, Max had been my only family, and she had started out as my college roommate. Her family had adopted me, her father taking me under his wing particularly, and while I appreciated it, they weren’t blood. However, after the events of the previous night, I was starting to think that being on my own for so long was a bit of a blessing, despite the fact that I missed my parents every single day.

She broke from our embrace. “You laughed about it all those years,” she said to Crawford, “but it was never easy. It was never easy being from that family. Having those brothers.” She reached into her bag and took out a tissue, wiping under her eyes. “It’s just that they’re all I have, and I’m just stupid enough to try to make it work again.”

I felt for her; I really did. I was ready to put the Stepkowskis out of my head once and for all, though, and would be happy when the money was returned to Chick and Crawford and I could go back to pretending that our lives consisted of the two of us, Trixie, and the twins. It seemed like adding anyone else—even Max and Fred sometimes—disrupted the natural ebb and flow of our daily lives and our relationship. Then I thought of growing old, Crawford hopefully by my side, and no one else. No rambunctious kids, no doted-upon grandchildren, just us. Was that what I really wanted?

*   *   *

After Christine left, Crawford took the money and put it into a larger sealed envelope. “I’ll get rid of this as soon as possible,” he said. “This week. I’ll go see him this week.”

The sooner, the better, I thought.

Three

I love fall semester at St. Thomas University. Well, maybe not the teaching part so much, but the campus itself. That Monday morning, a couple of weeks into the semester, was a gorgeous sixty-degree day that made walking through campus a joy, not a chore, despite the hills and valleys that make winter treks treacherous. Today, the river was in front of me, the sun overhead, and the leaves on the trees beside me beginning to burnish gold and red.

Plus, it was taco day in the commuter cafeteria. What could be better than that?

Nothing, I tell you. Taco day has lifted me out of many a depressed state over my years at St. Thomas.

I swung my messenger bag back and forth as I walked down the back steps to the office area; they had been fixed over the summer after a hundred years of neglect. Once, those steps had been my daily Waterloo, making it a challenge for me, a confirmed klutz, just to get from my car to the office without falling. Now, they were a study in pristine masonry. I still marveled every day at how having this one stress taken out of my work life had made things go so much more smoothly in this new school year. It’s the little things, my mother used to say, and in this instance, she was correct.

I locked my office every night, something I hadn’t started doing until I got a talking-to from Crawford about regular theft, identity theft, the difference between robbery and burglary, and a host of other police things that I had no interest in but could happen if someone decided to let himself or herself into my inner sanctum after I left. These were the kinds of dissertations that he found fascinating and that put me to sleep; when all was said and done, it was just easier to do what he wanted. It was a good plan, if I put my keys in the same place every night, but I didn’t. Hence, part of every morning was spent digging around in the bottom of my bag, my pockets, and anywhere else that keys might be stored, all while greeting various nuns who also kept offices near mine. Sister Perpetua wanted to borrow my iPad to play Angry Birds. (I said no.) Sister Dolores Marie complimented me on my skirt; I suspected she wanted my iPad as well. Sister James Patrick thought that we were going to get rain based on her creaky knees. Sister Anna Catherine wanted to know if I was going to coach the basketball team again. (I wasn’t. My coaching days were definitely over.) Sister Louise, finally, wanted to know if taco day in the cafeteria was as good as everyone said it was. It was, I assured her.

Finally, I unearthed my keys from my bag and entered my office, closing the door behind me. Out in the office area, I heard the booming voice of Sister Mary McLaughlin, my boss and occasional nemesis. Judging from the few words I could decipher and the sound of her footsteps on the ancient hardwood floor, I discerned that she was coming my way and that she wasn’t alone.

The day was off to a good start, and nothing was going to ruin that, even a cranky six-foot nun with a penchant for assigning me really horrible tasks that supposedly would benefit our entire department. I didn’t see how counting the number of words in a particular stanza of an obscure poem was benefiting the entire department, but I did what I was told until I figured out that she was screwing with me, albeit in a very intellectual sort of way. Now I usually tried to make an end run around her if I could.

I picked up the phone and dialed Max. When she answered, I said, “We’re having a very important conversation, and there will be times you don’t understand what I’m talking about, but just stay on the line.” I realized, too late, that I could have pantomimed this phone call without anyone on the other end, but I’m more of a Method actor when it comes to deluding and evading my boss.

“You got it. Can I eat while you talk?” she asked, even though I could hear she hadn’t stopped eating since answering the phone. My guess? Bacon and egg on a bagel, one of her favorites. My mouth started watering, the quick-cook oats I had eaten an hour earlier a distant reminder of today’s latest culinary disappointment.