"I wouldn't say that," Tess said nervously. "You're…self-contained, self-sufficient, but not sterile."
"I am what I am, Tess. I adapted and I survived. The question is, what did I give up along the way? I gave up my daughter. I gave up myself."
Tess thought of the Just-So Stories in Sal's Kipling Compendium, each one the story of someone who had changed in order to survive. The camel had to have a hump, the leopard had to develop spots, the elephant needed a nose, if only to remind him of the perils of satiable curiosity. For several miles, neither woman spoke.
"Are you going to be okay?" Tess asked as they headed east toward Butchers Hill. "I mean, there's this thing at my mom's tonight that's absolutely mandatory, but if you need me, I'll go late, or leave early."
"No, your job is done," Jackie said. "I asked you to find my daughter and you did. How much do I owe you?"
"The retainer more than covers it. You don't even owe me mileage. We always used your car."
At the curb outside Tess's office, Jackie suddenly pressed a hand to her forehead.
"Do you have an aspirin in your office? I don't think I can make the drive back to Columbia feeling like this."
Tess dashed inside and returned with a generic ibuprofen, a glass of water, and a panting Esskay, who also wanted to pay her respects. Jackie drank the water gratefully, patted the dog, then slid over the driver's seat, handing Tess her backpack along with the empty glass.
"Thank you," she said formally, offering her hand. "I actually came to like you over the past two weeks."
"Hey, me too. How does the song go? You may have been a headache, but you never were a bore. Besides, we're connected, aren't we? We're family, if you think about it."
"You and Sam are connected. There's really nothing between us."
"Oh," said Tess, feeling rebuffed. She thought they had shared quite a bit. Then Jackie smiled.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, I was just thinking about our adventures together. Meeting Mr. Mole, going to that lesbian bar, that stupid story you made me tell about Fresh Lake Trout. Did you ever find that kid, by the way?"
"Yeah." Insular Jackie had to be the one person in Baltimore who didn't know she had found Sal Hawkings. "It didn't quite turn out the way I expected, but I found him."
"And that white trash Willa Mott, the rabbit holes she sent us down. You think there ever was a Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who planned to name their baby Caitlin?"
"I guess we'll never know."
"I guess not," Jackie said, waved, then drove out of Tess's life.
Tess and Esskay walked into the office. Tess sat down at her computer and looked at her once unblemished desk calendar. It wasn't so unsullied now. Names, leads, and doodles covered its surface, spilling over into days she hadn't even lived yet. There were rings from Coke cans, rogan josh drippings, greasy smears, and, of course, traces of chocolate. It was messy. Life was messy. She would have to remember to tell Jackie that. Life was messy.
Then she remembered she would never see Jackie again.
Chapter 25
Tess hated all seafood. Crab hated her back. One bite, the tinest sliver of its flesh in a casserole or a dip, and she'd go into anaphylactic shock, her trachea swelling until she couldn't breathe. On the plus side, her allergy had made for an unforgettable eighth birthday party for Noam Fischer. Whenever she ran into him, usually browsing the history table at the Smith College book sale, he still spoke of it with great cheer, as if it were a high point of his childhood. "You turned blue! You almost died!"
So one might think that, given the twenty-nine years she had been hanging around, her own parents would be able to remember this salient fact. But as the crab feast got under way at the Monaghans' house, it quickly became apparent that Judith had forgotten to plan an alternative main course. Unless Tess found something in the pantry, she was going to dine on cole slaw, corn on the cob, and her own fruit salad, which she didn't even particularly like.
"Don't you have any peanut butter?" she asked her mother, pushing jars and cans around. Judith never threw anything out, so her well-organized shelves were filled with the exotic but not-quite-edible foods people send as gifts. Chutney, fruit cakes, jellies in strange flavors. "I could at least make myself a sandwich."
"I could run up to Arby's, get her a roast beef," her father said helpfully. He still had on his summer work clothes, a short-sleeved white shirt and clip-on blue tie, a shade lighter than his eyes. He also had his summer sunburn, one shade lighter than his hair.
Tess thought if someone was going to escape on her account, it should be her. "Or maybe I could just go get takeout from Mr. G's, or the Chinese place over on Ingleside, the one with the dancing cow. That's it, I'll get some dumplings, maybe an order of spare ribs."
"No!" Judith screamed, in a voice so shrill and hysterical that it stopped them both in their tracks as they edged toward the kitchen door. But no one looked more surprised than Judith at the strangled sound that had come out of her.
"I mean-don't leave me. I need you both here. If you get me through this, Pat, I'll go down to the ocean with your family in August, stay in that horrid little condo of theirs, and never say a word."
Tess exchanged a look with her father. This was a serious concession indeed. Judith insisted on staying in a separate hotel when the Monaghans staged their August reunion and usually came up with a reason to leave two days into the week-long vacation.
"Okay, hon," he said. "I won't leave, and neither will Tess. She'll just have to dig up something around here she can eat." He opened his arms and Judith allowed herself to be embraced. As they snuggled, Tess was reminded of the chemistry that had sizzled between her parents all these years, the one constant in their marriage. They had thrown in their lot with one another less than two weeks after Donald Weinstein had introduced his kid sister to this up-and-coming Monaghan kid in the West Side Democratic Club. Both families had predicted, hoped, prayed, that the union would founder. But here it was, thirty-plus years later, and there was still a glimmer of whatever had passed between them at that first meeting. Tess would have found her parents' relationship inspiring if she didn't happen to believe it had warped her for life. Hadn't she sent her last boyfriend packing for the simple crime of being too nice, too easy-going?
"I'll go put the newspapers down," Tess said. "Should I tape them or just weigh them down with dishes?"
"Tape the first layer," Judith said, her words muffled by Patrick's shoulder. "Then spread another over the top, so we can gather them up as the tables get full and put them straight into the garbage bags."
Within an hour, the paper-covered picnic tables in the backyard were full and bits of crab shell flew through the air with each swing of a crab mallet. Even crab-aversant Tess couldn't help being impressed by the professional skills her relatives brought to the dismemberment of this non-kosher delicacy. Uncle Jules and Aunt Sylvie had special mallets, of course, wooden heads on sterling silver handles, their monogram engraved along the shaft. They were messy types, sacrificing large pieces of crab meat to greedy haste. Cousin Deborah was neat, but prone to tiny cuts along her manicured nails, painful when the Old Bay seasoning rubbed against them. Little Samuel sat between his grandparents, pounding on the table with his own monogrammed mallet, as if practicing for the day when he could eat more than Saltines and corn sliced from the cob.
Uncle Donald dissected his crab with a knife and was expert at extracting large pieces of back fin, the best part of the crab. But Gramma was the fastest, cleanest picker of all. She had once won a crab-picking contest for local celebrities, thirty years back, when the proprietess of Weinstein's was considered a certain local celebrity. She told the story at every family crab feast. She was telling it now.