“Oh, my God,” she said. “I forgot I left the house without a cent. Can I write a check?”
Ronnie glanced at Clarice. This was one of the few areas where the manager had some say-so. The Bagel Barn did not accept checks as a rule, but Clarice had the authority to make exceptions.
“What’s the big deal?” the woman asked when Ronnie didn’t answer right away. “I’m good for it.”
What’s the big deal? That’s what everyone said when they wanted special treatment. What’s the big deal, what’s it to you? The big deal, Ronnie wanted to tell them, was that rules were rules and you had to follow them, or else the world got crazy, and you went crazy with it. She and her doctor had worked on this back at Shechter. “You can sometimes break rules for a reason,” her doctor had said. “But the reason can’t be ‘Because I feel like it.’ That’s what we call ethics, Ronnie. In certain situations, ignoring a rule because you realize that following it would do harm is the ethical thing to do. Everything else is just an excuse, a rationalization.”
“You got an ATM card?” Clarice asked. The woman nodded. “There’s a machine, right behind you. You can get cash out of that.”
“Oh, but the fee is so high. Two dollars on a twenty-dollar order. It’s a rip-off. Just on principle, I’d prefer to write a check.”
Ronnie looked at the woman’s canvas bag, which had leather handles and trim, at the rings on her thin hands, the tennis bracelet on her wrist. She knew Clarice had caught the same details. The woman wouldn’t miss two dollars. But the thing was, the tapper was the kind of person who would complain, who might call the owners and make trouble for Clarice. No more than three seconds passed as Clarice considered what to do, but the woman pushed her billfold impatiently at Ronnie, flipping it open to her driver’s license.
“I have ID. You can see I have ID. What, do you think I spend my Saturday afternoons kiting twenty-dollar checks?”
The photo on the ID showed the woman with a different hairstyle. A familiar hairstyle to Ronnie, and a familiar name. Sandra Hess. Maddy’s mom. Even the address was familiar to Ronnie, although she had never once been to Maddy’s house. But she knew the streets where the better-off St. William girls had lived. Maddy’s mom. She should have known her by her squinty eyes, her put-upon voice.
“You’re such a liar,” she said, not meaning to say it out loud.
“What? What?”
Clarice stepped forward. “Of course we’ll take your check, ma’am. Just make it out to the Bagel Barn and make sure you put a phone number on it.”
“Can I make it out for a little over?” Sandra Hess wheedled, and Ronnie knew she was pressing her advantage because of what Ronnie had said. She had the upper hand now. She probably didn’t even need the cash, but she was going to make them treat her special because that’s what women like Maddy’s mom did. Clarice nodded, and she wrote it for twenty dollars above the total.
Ronnie handed over the bagels. “Can I have extra freezer bags?” Of course she could. “Do you have a bigger bag than this, one with handles?” They did. When she was finally satisfied and had turned to go, Ronnie called to her.
“Say hello to Maddy for me.”
The woman turned back, instinctively gracious, clearly pleased by the very mention of her daughter. But her mouth ended up hanging open as she looked long and hard at Ronnie’s face. She then edged out the door backward. Once in the parking lot, she walked-ran to her car, a gleaming silver sedan, and drove away in the herky-jerky panic of someone who thought she might be pursued.
“What was that about?” Clarice asked, locking the door behind the fleeing tapper, although it was only 1:55.
“I went to grade school with her daughter. The girl was a jerk, and her mom was a bitch. I guess nothing changes.”
“But why did you call her a liar?”
Ronnie hated how smoothly her own lie came, how easy it was to deceive Clarice. “I could see the edge of some bills in her wallet. She had plenty of money, she was just saving it for something else. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“You got to keep those thoughts close,” Clarice said, worried for her. “I was thinking some much worse things, but you notice I didn’t say them out loud.”
Ronnie wished she could tell Clarice the true story, the whole story. How Maddy’s mother had gone on television giving interviews after Alice and Ronnie were arrested and charged. How she had told all sorts of lies about what had happened that day, so no one would think it was her fault. She said the girls had left the party without permission, that they had assured her they had a ride. Lie, lie, lie. But no one came after Maddy’s mother for anything. No one locked her up for not telling the truth. At least Alice didn’t get away with her lies. The world was full of liars.
Yet Ronnie had to lie, too, just to get along. Her doctor had said it was okay, that she did not owe the world the story of her life, that there were lies of omission and lies of commission, and the first kind was okay. But how she ached to tell the whole story. She wanted someone, anyone to take her side. She could not tell Clarice the truth about Maddy’s mother without telling Clarice everything, and then Clarice would never take her side again, in anything.
13.
Cynthia Barnes was on Nottingham Road, heading home. She found herself on Nottingham almost every day. She rationalized that it was an excellent shortcut, although she had managed to live in the neighborhood for years without using this secondary street. Now it seemed the perfect route to everywhere, and places that could be reached via Nottingham became preferable to those that could not. If Warren wanted Chinese food, for example, then the run-down carryout on Ingleside was clearly superior to their old favorite on Route 40. Cynthia told Warren she preferred the shrimp fried rice at Wung Fong, which she slathered with hot mustard until it was almost painful to eat. She really did like the fortune cookies, whose messages had a retro glumness missing in more modern ones.
On this particular day, she was driving home from visiting her sister, Sylvia, out in the suburbs. She had followed the odd stretch of highway that dead-ended at the edge of Leakin Park, where construction was halted years ago by environmentalists. A highway-to-nowhere, one of two in Baltimore. She tried to remember what had stopped this one. Opponents had argued that the park was a valuable ecosystem, a refuge for deer and other wildlife in the heart of the city. Leakin Park’s reputation as a place to dump dead bodies was temporarily forgotten and it became a sylvan glade in the heart of the city. Funny, what people could come to believe, so quickly and so fiercely.
Be careful what you wish for, as a Wung Fong fortune cookie might warn. The deer population, all those little Bambis whose photos had helped to block the highway, was out of control, raiding gardens in the nearby neighborhoods. Cause and effect, Cynthia thought, cause and effect. Very few people had the patience or rigor to think things through. Save the park, save the deer, and now the deer rampaged through the local gardens and there was still no effective east-west route through the city. Happy now? Was everybody happy now?