“You went to visit with her. Hattie told me about the flowers too.”
“I did.”
Mrs. Hope asked, “Did you have a nice visit with her?” I must have looked completely confused by the question, so she came to my rescue. “Sorry, Moe, that’s between you and Sam.”
“No need to apologize, really.”
“Moe,” she said, “is that short for something?”
“Moses.”
“My favorite figure from the Old Testament.”
“My brother’s name is Aaron, and my little sister is Miriam.”
That turned Mrs. Hope’s polite smile into a beacon. “Good for your folks. Come in, sit down. You must be hungry. Can I fix you something to eat, get you a drink?”
“Thank you, yes, Mrs. Hope. I’d like that very much.”
“That’s settled, then. Take your coat off and sit yourself down at the table. We can talk while I get your lunch ready.”
I did as she asked. The interior of the house was a mirror of the outside: neat, simple, clean. The furniture was all clean lines and upholstered cushions. The dining room set was colonial. A big copper lamp that had been refitted for electricity hung over the table for light. Then, as I scanned the walls, my heart did that flip-floppy thing. It wasn’t the pictures of Sam at different ages that did it to me, but rather all the plaques in the living room that featured the names of various police organizations and images of badges and stars.
“What does Mr. Hope do for a living?” I called into the kitchen, but there was no answer.
“Were you Samantha’s boyfriend there in New York?” she asked instead.
“No,” I answered, standing up, walking into the living room. “I’m her boyfriend’s best friend.” Apparently, old Hattie hadn’t shared all the information with her friend. “His name is Bobby Friedman and he’s still too broken up about what happened to deal with it.”
That was the second time I’d said those words or ones just like them in the last few hours, but I hadn’t thought about them, really considered them until that moment. Were they true? Yeah, probably, but I couldn’t help wondering why Bobby hadn’t come here for the funeral after Sam’s body was released to her family. We never discussed it. Maybe we should have.
I stood in front of one of the many plaques on the wall and read silently to myself:
For service above and beyond the call of duty on the date of August 6, 1956, this commendation is awarded to Trooper Samuel Hope.
All the plaques and awards were much alike except for Samuel Hope’s rank; he’d risen to the rank of colonel. I’d often wondered why Samantha didn’t talk much about her family or where she was from. I understood now. Tough to think of your dad as the enemy. Samantha didn’t resemble her dad at all, but they had had many photos taken together, many of which were on proud display — some on the walls, some on the coffee table, others on the mantel over the fireplace. I went and sat back down in the dining room.
“Was Samantha named for her dad?” I called in to Mrs. Hope.
“Yes. Samuel desperately wanted a son to follow in his footsteps. Strange though, that husband of mine loved his daughter more than he could ever have loved a son, I think. They were close, much closer than Samantha and me. They were inseparable, those two. Here you go,” said Mrs. Hope, stepping from the kitchen into the dining room. She carried a floral print metal tray. On it was a glass of milk, a white bread sandwich containing some sort of pink-hued meat — probably ham — potato chips, a pickle spear, and an apple.
Clearly, Mrs. Hope wasn’t up on the rules of keeping kosher. Technically, Jews can’t eat dairy products and meat together, and they can never eat pork, dairy or no dairy. Me, I would never be mistaken for a Talmudic scholar or an observant Jew, though the concept of milk and meat, ham or otherwise, did make me a little queasy. The queasiness didn’t improve when I found that the ham was slathered not with mustard, which I loved, but with mayonnaise. Yet, I didn’t want to insult my hostess or lose whatever goodwill I had earned with her.
“Delicious,” I said, taking big bites and swallowing with little chewing. I savored the chips and the odd-tasting pickle. Kosher dill pickles weren’t sweet, but this pickle spear tasted like it had been cured in sugar syrup. I kind of liked it.
She wouldn’t sit. Instead she hovered, fussing over me, brushing crumbs away, getting me another napkin. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.”
“So, Sam’s dad is a state trooper. Must’ve been tough on your husband when … I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re right, Moe. It nearly killed Samuel to think that his girl had gotten all tangled up with radicals and hippie types. We will never understand how that happened. Her whole life, up until the time Samantha left for college, all she ever wanted to be was a trooper like her father. But people change, kids grow up, and you don’t know them anymore.”
“There are female cops, aren’t there?” I said.
She let out a laugh. “Not in this family. My husband wouldn’t hear of it. No daughter of Samuel Hope was going to wear a badge and strap on a gun. It was the only thing those two ever fought about. So, Moe, if you don’t mind me asking, can you tell me about what Sam was like the last year before … you know?”
With that, I regaled Mrs. Hope with tales of her daughter. I explained about how all the guys had secret crushes on her, but not only for her beauty. I told her we thought her daughter was smarter and more worldly than any woman we’d ever met. I explained how, in spite of Bobby’s politics, that he was a good and loyal boyfriend who loved her daughter to distraction. I told her how we too were surprised by what had happened, that no one would have expected either Samantha or Marty Lavitz of being involved in any violence.
After I washed up, I told her that snow was in the forecast and that I had to get on the road. She thanked me and gave me a long hug. I hugged her back.
“You take care of yourself, Moses Prager,” she said, winking at me. “You come back and visit too. Sam was lucky to have a friend like you.”
“Thank you. One thing, Mrs. Hope, if you don’t mind?”
“Anything.”
“Well, I guess we knew Sam was older than us, but I had no idea she was twenty-five.”
“She did always look young for her age and she had that energy, you know?”
I did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I got about an hour outside of town before stopping to fill up. When I pulled out of the station, the flurries began to fall. At first they fell in big, lazy flakes. They would stop for a while and then start up again, but after another half hour, stopping wasn’t on the storm’s agenda. The snow grew steadier and heavier as the sky darkened. At least I knew how not to get lost on my way home, though the snow and dark made it unlikely that the return trip would take any less time. What I hoped for was that I would eventually get ahead of the weather, because the storm was predicted to stay north and miss New York City altogether.
The roads were getting pretty slick and tricky, the snow accumulating so quickly that I could barely make out the black of the pavement beneath. Look, I’d had my license for less than two years and it wasn’t like I was Richard Petty or A. J. Foyt. I was good at city driving, real good. I was never scared of driving into Manhattan, but I knew adults who would break out in hives at the thought of driving over the Brooklyn Bridge and dealing with yellow cabs and crowded streets. This was something else, though. I didn’t have much experience with rolling hills and snowy country roads. The pressure of driving in my brother’s car wasn’t helping any either. I was several miles away from Route 80 when I felt the Tempest’s snow tires occasionally losing traction. That always made me nervous, the sense of impending loss of control. Maybe that’s why I didn’t dig drugs that much.
Each time I felt the tires spin, lose their grip, I slowed down a few miles an hour. Up to that point I’d been lucky in that I seemed to be one of the few idiots out on the road. So when I slowed, I wasn’t pissing anyone off. In city driving, that was always part of the equation: Am I pissing off the guy behind me? Is he going to get out of his car at the next red light and beat the shit out of me? Thinking about that made me smile and relax a little bit. Then when I looked in my rearview mirror, I noticed headlights that hadn’t been there before. They were back a ways, but the hills made it impossible for me to know how far back. I didn’t think anything of it at first. So what if there were two idiots driving around on these roads? But the next time I checked my mirror, I noticed that those headlights had made up a lot of the distance between us. The next time I looked, the headlights were gone. Well, at least one of us idiots made it home safe.