“It’s possible, Victoria,” Lotty said, when I talked it over with her. “The human body is an amazing instrument, the mind more so. I would never discount any possibility of remarkable strength and contriving.”
That same Tuesday, I started picking up the reins of my business again. Among dozens of messages of good wishes from friends and reporters, and a van full of flowers from my most important client (“Delighted to know you’re not dead yet, Darraugh,” the card read), my answering service reported at least twenty calls from Buffalo Bill, demanding a meeting: he wanted to know “what fabrications I was filling his grandson’s head with, and straighten out once and for all what I could and could not say about the family.”
“Boy won’t come home,” the Buffalo said to me when I called him back Tuesday afternoon. “Says you’ve told him all kinds of lies about me, about the business.”
“Careful with the words you toss around, Mr. Bysen. You accuse me of lying, and I could add a slander suit to your family’s legal troubles. And I don’t have any power over Billy-he’s deciding for himself what he will and won’t do. When I talk to him, I’ll see if I can get him to agree to meet with you-and that’s all I’ll do.”
Later that same afternoon, Morrell came by with Billy-and Mr. Contreras and the dogs. Josie had gone back to school-under protest, according to her mother. I myself had canceled basketball practice yesterday, telling the team I’d have to let them know when I was strong enough to return. They’d responded with a get-well card big enough to cover the wall in Lotty’s spare room, filled with encouraging messages in English and Spanish.
Amy Blount had already filled me in on Billy and Josie, because she hadn’t been able to persuade them to leave Mary Ann’s place when she drove down there on Friday. Rose Dorrado had been more forceful, dragging Josie home and compelling her to return to school.
As Amy described it, the reunion between Rose and her daughter was a predictable combination of joy and fury (“You were here, not two miles from me, clean, well fed, safe, and me, I have not slept at night for worry!”).
Billy, shell-shocked by his father’s behavior, stayed on at Mary Ann’s. He’d called his grandmother, and spoken briefly to his mother, but he wouldn’t go home. He didn’t even want to go back to Pastor Andrés: he thought the minister shared the blame in Frank Zamar’s death because of the pressure he’d put on Zamar to back out of his contract with By-Smart.
The main reason Billy wouldn’t leave Mary Ann’s, though, was because he didn’t have the energy to pack up and move one more time. He’d been at the pastor’s, he’d been at Josie’s, and then at Mary Ann’s, all in the last ten days. He was too upset to organize himself mentally into another move-and my coach definitely liked having him living in the apartment with her. Now that he wasn’t hiding, he walked the dog three or four times a day, and he brought all his intensity to studying Latin with her. Its rules, its complex grammar, seemed to be a haven for him right now, a place of purity, regularity.
On Tuesday, in Lotty’s apartment, he tried to explain some of that to me, and some of his reluctance to see his family again. “I love them all, maybe not Dad, at least, I find it hard to forgive him for killing April’s dad and Mr. Zamar-and even if Freddy and Bron made the plant burn down, I think it was really because of Aunt Jacqui, and-and Dad, that Mr. Zamar is dead. I even love Mom, and, of course, my grandparents, they’re great people, they really are, but-but I think they’re shortsighted.”
He curled his hands in Peppy’s fur and spoke to her, not to me. “It’s funny, they have such a big vision for the company, how to make it an international giant, but the only people they really recognize as-as human-are themselves. They can’t see that Josie is a person, and her family, and all the people who work in South Chicago. If someone wasn’t born a Bysen, they don’t count. If they are Bysens, it doesn’t matter what they do, because they’re part of the family. Like Grandma, she is truly against abortion in every way, she gives tons of money to antiabortion groups, but when Candy, when my sister, got pregnant, Grandma whisked her off to a clinic-they were mad at Candy, but Grandma got her an abortion that they’d never let Josie have, not that Josie’s pregnant.” He turned beet red. “We-we did listen to what you said, about-well, being careful-but it’s just an example of what I mean about how my family sees the world.”
“Your grandfather wants to talk to you. If we did it in my office, would you come?”
He worked furiously on Peppy’s neck. “I guess. I guess.”
So the day before Thanksgiving, much against Lotty’s wishes, I went to my office for a meeting with Bysen and his retinue. For once, I had enough people in my office to make me glad of my huge space. Billy’s mother was there with his grandparents, Uncle Roger, and Linus Rankin, the family lawyer. Jacqui’s husband, Uncle Gary, had also shown up. Of course, Mildred was in attendance, gold portfolio in hand.
My team included Morrell and Amy Blount. Mr. Contreras insisted on being present, with the dogs-“just in case those Bysens try anything on you in broad daylight; I wouldn’t put nothing past them.” Marcena’s parents also attended, curious to see the people who had nearly killed their daughter. I’d had to borrow five chairs from my warehouse mate’s studio so everyone could sit down.
In the middle, stubbornly sitting next to Peppy after giving his grandmother a hug, was Billy. He wore an old flannel work shirt and blue jeans, setting himself apart deliberately from his family’s gray business suits.
When Billy’s grandmother said she was sure Linus could work something out with me, Mr. Contreras bristled at once. “Your son darn near killed my girl here. You think you can come in here and wave your big fat wallet around and ‘work something out’ with her? Like what? Give her back her health? Give the Loves back their daughter’s skin? Give that poor sick girl on Cookie-Vicki-on Ms. Warshawski’s basketball team her daddy back? What’s going through your head?”
Mrs. Bysen frowned at him, sadly, as if at one of her grandchildren who was fighting at mealtime. “I’ve never involved myself in my husband’s business, but I know he works with hundreds of small companies. We both admire Miss Warshawski’s courage and her tenacity; we’re sorry our son was so-well, did what he did. His behavior doesn’t reflect our values, I assure you. I think if my husband started giving some of his investigative work to Miss Warshawski, she’d find herself amply rewarded as her business gained in importance.”
“And in return?” I asked politely.
“Oh, in return you’d get rid of all those copies of that silly tape. We don’t want that out in public, it doesn’t help anyone.”
“And I can probably get it suppressed as evidence, if William ever comes to trial at all,” Linus Rankin added helpfully.
I rolled up my sweater sleeves and looked thoughtfully at my purple flesh. I had let Morrell photograph me, although I’d hated it, hated the sense of exposure. Now I didn’t feel any embarrassment, didn’t say anything, just let Grandma and Rankin look at my swollen, discolored skin.
“She doesn’t need that kind of help,” Billy said. “She isn’t about money, she-Grandma, if you really knew her, you’d know, even though she’s not a Christian, she lives her life by all the values you taught me: she’s honest, she looks after her friends, she-she’s so full of courage-”
“Billy.” I laughed in embarrassment. “That’s a beautiful testimonial. I hope I live long enough to deserve a quarter of it. Mrs. Bysen, here’s the problem: that recording doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to Marcena Love. I can’t speak for her. But I can make a little suggestion to you and your husband. You weren’t involved in William’s exploits. Stay away from them now. Even if Jacqui is right, that Buffalo Bill told her to bring Frank Zamar at Fly the Flag into line-that it was her test to see if she was worthy of the By-Smart management team-he didn’t specifically order anyone to set the plant on fire and kill Mr. Zamar, or to kill Bron Czernin. At least, I don’t think he did, did he?”