“You didn’t forget,” she said, staring down at the hand he had taken. “You didn’t make any memories of it. You were blacked out. Again.”
He opened his mouth to speak but then shut it. The smell of her—Halle was playfully vain and girlish and traveled in an aura of her own scent—threatened to knock him over. It was a lovely and painful contrast to the aroma he normally experienced in his big hollow house: fried food and bleach.
“The thing is, it was a bad week,” he finally said. “I knew it was coming; it happens every year. Then I had a big hearing on Tuesday, and my boss gave me the rest of the week off. It’s no excuse. It’s just . . . what happened.”
“I saw that on a docket sheet last week,” she said. “That pedophile, right? The one you got put into the psych hospital last year?” She still wouldn’t make eye contact with him.
“Aaron Hathorne, yes. This was his twelve-month review of confinement.”
“So he’ll stay confined?”
“We’re waiting on a final ruling. I think so, yeah.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess. But I mean . . . to celebrate that, you went on a three-day bender?” Her voice rose on the last word. The edge was back.
Joe sighed. “Two days. I didn’t start drinking, really, until Thursday.” His knee aching from kneeling, he stood and went to the fridge in search of grapefruit juice. He was hungover and thirsty. “I didn’t get arrested. I didn’t get thrown out of a place, at least that I know of. There are just . . . things I can’t remember.”
“Like two cops, Joe, telling you your homeless mother was found murdered on a stretch of beach?”
“I don’t have a mother!” he snapped, shutting the fridge door hard with a juice carton in hand. “I didn’t on Thursday night either, when whoever this woman was got killed.”
“You told me it was an anniversary,” she said, almost whispering. “The night of the blackout in ’77.”
“Yes, ’77.” And a good fourteen years before she was born, an inner voice chided him. You never had the right to drag her into your life, no matter how hot for it she seemed, no matter what daddy issues she has. “That was the last night she was my mother.”
“Well, the police think she was your mother. So I guess the city thinks that too, and I guess you’re responsible for her, right? You said last night you’d have to go to the morgue in Queens and ID her.”
“I’m sure I said that, but it was stupid. I can’t ID her; it’s been way too long.”
“Yeah, but you can claim her, right? Someone has to.”
“Not really,” Joe said. “I have to deal with the police. I don’t necessarily have to deal with OCME.”
“You know what happens if you don’t? She ends up being buried by inmates. On that island out there.”
“The potter’s field, yes.” He took a long swig from the carton and wiped his chin. “I know that sounds cold, but like I said, I don’t have a mother. I’m within my rights to let the police ask what they want until they go away. I’m not a suspect.”
“It just happened; you don’t know what they’re thinking. And you can’t even tell them for sure where you were Thursday night. I know it’s crazy, but God, what if they start focusing on you? I’ve seen what they can do when they want a case closed.”
“I was probably at one of two bars,” Joe said at lower volume, as if that could contain the shame he was feeling. “Greeley’s, more than likely. I won’t have any issue verifying that. Look, whoever killed her is probably someone she was involved with on the street. If they solve it, it’ll most likely be within a couple of days. If it takes longer than that, it may just stay unsolved. Either way, at some point, yes, the city puts her out on Hart Island. I’m sorry, but that’s where she belongs.”
“What about your brother?”
“Robbie? What about him?”
“You said he was back in touch.”
“Yeah. He’s in Staten Island, but I haven’t been over there in years. He reached out for money once, but otherwise we don’t speak much.”
“Will they talk to him? Detectives, I mean.”
“If they can find him, I guess,” Joe said with a shrug. “They’ll tell him independently of me. I really don’t care.”
“Joe, come on.”
“Come on, what? Why do I need this? Why do I need a five-thousand-dollar funeral bill for a woman who abandoned my brother and me in a station wagon forty years ago?”