Karp went back to his office and wandered through near-deserted halls until he came to the office of V.T. Newbury in the Fraud Bureau. Somewhat to his surprise, V.T. was still there, and Karp went in.
No institutional furniture for V.T. Karp sat himself in a leather sling chair that had never seen a procurement order and smiled across the mahogany banker’s desk at his friend.
“Don’t you have a family to go home to?” V.T. asked. “I thought it’d be Monday before you got back to me. In any case, I’m impressed.”
“Thank you. What’s up?”
“Well, I thought you might want to take a look at our dear and glorious physician in the flesh. We’re having him on Monday for a chat.”
“You made your move.”
“Yes, the impetuous Menotti has struck. The war rants were issued today, and at this moment federal marshals are racking up overtime seizing records. Menotti’s got a team assembled to dig into the stuff over the long weekend.”
“What, he doesn’t want his turkey?”
“I think he plans to feast on Dr. Robinson this year. So-you interested?”
“Fascinated, but I got this trial. I could come by afterward, though, late afternoon. You think he’ll still be there?”
“Oh, he’ll be there,” V.T. replied confidently. “We have much to discuss. How’s the trial? I hear you have your jury.”
“Yeah. Also, Perlsteiner says he’s not crazy.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Just another sane average granny killer in blackface, hey?”
Karp rolled his eyes. “Bite your tongue, V.T.,” he said.
Marlene sat on the living room couch with her daughter, reading and rubbing each other’s feet. The twins were blessedly napping, simultaneously for a change, Posie was off for the weekend, and Karp was at the office, using the pre-Christmas lull to catch up on neglected duties. A rare moment of peace, this, or should have been. Marlene was looking forward to Christmas with her family, as she always did, and, despite herself, rolling over in her mind the most recent Thanksgiving dinner, which she had spent at Karp’s father’s place. After a dozen years of marriage to Karp she still had not grown used to the barbarism of his family. From the first year, the deal (and it was a deal) was that Thanksgiving would be spent with the Karps, and Christmas would be with the Ciampis. Karp’s father, who had made a small fortune in corrugated boxes, and like most of the self-made rich was used to getting his way, had never entirely accepted that he was not to have all his grandchildren around him at Yuletide (which, as an elaborately assimilated Jew, he had made his very own) to squeal at his overexpensive presents and do him honor. Marlene had early made this a divorce-court issue, holding to the principle Natale con i tuoi e Pasqua con chi vuoi: you spent Christmas with your family and Easter, or Thanksgiving, with whom you pleased.
The event itself was always the same, and might have been specifically designed (in her more paranoid moments Marlene thought it literally might have) to produce irritation on a grand scale. The gathering consisted of Karp’s two older brothers, one a CPA and the other the president of daddy’s firm, their lovely wives, the elder Karp’s lovely wife, a former starlet not ten years older than her oldest stepson, six assorted children, ranging from three to twelve, plus, of course, Butch and Marlene and their three. After the meal, which was immense (prepared and served in sullen silence by Edna, the family retainer), it was the custom for the children to run screaming around the house, for the men to lock themselves in the “study” and watch the football games, and for the women to sit in the living room and talk, and referee the constant squabbles of the children. All three women were bores. The starlet stepmother had the grace to keep fairly mum and slip, as the afternoon progressed, into her accustomed boozy somnolence, but the sisters-in-law had strong opinions about everything and the sensitivity of tyrannosaurs. As they were upper West Side Jewish matrons, these opinions were (Israeli politics aside) all virulently liberal, and however the conversation began, Marlene always found herself forced into the position of defending both her husband (that persecutor of the downtrodden criminal classes) and her church (that persecutor of everything else) from the abortion policies of the current pope to the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition.
Inevitably, around the third quarter of the game, Marlene, who by then was starting to think that the Inquisition was not an entirely bad idea, would storm into the men’s retreat and give Karp a Look. Then, after a brief conversation in the hallway, conducted in harsh whispers, the Karps would make their excuses and leave, not, if the truth be told, much missed.
Although used to this misery, Marlene found that its effect on her had increased in recent years. Perhaps she was getting shorter-tempered in her old age, or her work was somehow lowering the barriers against violence. One day, she realized, she would lash out at the stupid women in some unforgivable way, and that would be the end of it all.
She glanced up from her book at Lucy, for whose sake, largely, she endured the torment; children, she believed, had the right to a complete family.
Lucy felt eyes on her and looked up from her own book, a Nancy Drew, and smiled. “What’re you reading, Mom?” she asked.
“I’m reading The Way of Perfection, by Saint Teresa.”
“The Little Flower?” said Lucy with interest. She was at the age when Therese of Lisieux was most appealing.
“No, Teresa of Avila.”
“Is that her on the cover?”
They inspected the cover together. It was, inevitably, a photograph of the great Bernini statue.
“Hey, she looks like you, Mom,” said Lucy.
“So I’ve been told. But that’s just the imagination of the sculptor. Maybe she didn’t look like that at all.”
“What’s it about? The book.”
“Oh, you know-saintly stuff. Teresa founded a bunch of convents, and this is what she thought the nuns in them should do.”
“Like what? Teaching school and stuff?”
“No, different kind of nuns. She wanted them to pray without ceasing.”
“They had to pray all the time?” Astonishment.
“Uh-huh. Every minute.”
“Even … even in the bathroom?” Giggles ensued.
“She thought,” said Marlene sternly, “that if she did, God would talk to her.”
“Did it work?” asked the infant pragmatist.
“Apparently so. That’s why she’s a saint.”
A discreet pause, and the child studied the figure in ecstasy. “Do you ever try to do it?” she asked.
“Uh-huh.”
A longer pause. “Did it work?”
“No,” said Marlene in a tone discouraging further inquiry.
Yes, thought Marlene as they both returned to their reading and foot rubbing, she had been a little older than Lucy was now when she tried it. How many thousand Our Fathers on her aching knees, sweat and tears pouring off her, her parents looking askance, her brothers teasing, her friends abandoned and hurt, and then the realization, unappealable, devastating, that there would not be a rapture, that the arrow from high heaven would not pierce her heart, that she would not hear the Voice say, as it had to St. Teresa, “I would not have you hold conversation with men, but with angels.”
From the distance of years, Marlene could be easier on herself. Queens in 1960 was not as congenial to the contemplative life as sixteenth-century Spain; Teresa had not had to contend with rock ‘n’ roll, makeup, James Dean movies, and greasy beautiful boys roaring down the street on chopped Harleys and stroked and channeled candy-flake Chevys. Marlene, thin and exhausted after this venture (the booby prize was that she became even more exquisite out of the travail), had thereafter begun in earnest to hold conversation with men, and put the ecclesiastical world on hold for over a decade.