Just One Look

Cora looked at the original photograph. “May I make an observation?”

“Yes.”

“This is pretty weird.”

“The guy over here”—Grace pointed—“the one with the beard. Who does that look like to you?”

Cora squinted. “I guess it could be Jack.”

“Could be or is?”

“You tell me.”

“Jack’s missing.”

“Come again?”

She told Cora the story. Cora listened, tapping a too-long fingernail painted up in Chanel’s Rouge Noir, a color not unlike blood, on the tabletop. When Grace finished, Cora said, “You know, of course, that I have a low opinion of men.”

“I know.”

“I believe that, for the most part, they are two floors below dog turd.”

“I know that too.”

“So the obvious answer is that, yes, this is a picture of Jack. That, yes, this little blondie, the one gazing up at him like he’s the messiah, is an old flame. That yes, Jack and Mary Magdalene here are having an affair. That someone, maybe her current husband, wanted you to find out about it, so he sent you that picture. That everything came to a head when Jack realized that you were onto him.”

“And that’s why he ran away?”

“Correct.”

“That doesn’t add up, Cora.”

“You have a better theory?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Good,” Cora said, “because I don’t buy it either. I’m just talking. The rule is thus: Men are scum. Jack, however, has always hit me as the exception that proves the rule.”

“I love you, you know.”

Cora nodded. “Everybody does.”

Grace heard a sound and glanced out the window. A stretch limousine of glistening black slid up the driveway with the smoothness of a Motown background singer. The chauffeur, a rat-faced man with the build of a whippet, hurried to open the car’s back door.

Carl Vespa had arrived.

Despite his rumored vocation, Carl Vespa did not dress in Sopranos-style velour or shiny, sealant-coated suits. He preferred khakis, Joseph Abboud sports coats, and loafers sans socks. He was mid-sixties but looked a solid decade younger. His hair was tickling-the-shoulders long, the color a distinguished shade of blond-gone-to-gray. His face was tanned and had the sort of waxy smoothness that suggests Botox. His teeth were aggressively capped, as if the front cuspids had taken growth hormones.

He nodded an order at the whippetlike driver and approached the house on his own. Grace opened the door to greet him. Carl Vespa gave her the toothy dazzler. She smiled back, glad to see him. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. No words were exchanged. They didn’t need them. He held both her hands and looked at her. She could see his eyes start to well up.

Max moved to his mother’s right. Vespa let go and took a step back.

“Max,” Grace began, “this is Mr. Vespa.”

“Hello, Max.”

“That your car?” Max asked.

“Yes.”

Max looked at the car, then at Vespa. “Got a TV inside?”

“It does.”

“Whoa.”

Cora cleared her throat.

“Oh, and this is my friend, Cora.”

“Charmed,” Vespa said.

Cora looked at the car, then at Vespa. “You single?”

“I am.”

“Whoa.”

Grace repeated the baby-sitting instructions for the sixth time. Cora pretended to listen. Grace gave her twenty dollars to order pizza and that cheesy bread Max had become enamored with of late. A classmate’s mom would bring Emma home in an hour.

Grace and Vespa headed toward the limousine. The rat-faced driver had the door opened and at the ready. Vespa said, “This is Cram,” gesturing to the driver. When Cram shook her hand, Grace had to bite back a scream.

“A pleasure,” Cram said. His smile brought on visions of a Discovery Channel documentary on sea predators. She slid in first and Carl Vespa followed.

There were Waterford glasses and a matching decanter half-filled with a liquid that appeared both caramel and luxurious. There was, as noted, a television set. Above her seat was a DVD player, multiple CD player, climate controls, and enough buttons to confuse an airline pilot. The whole thing—the crystal, the decanter, the electronics—was overstated, but maybe that was what you wanted in a stretch limousine.

“Where are we going?” Grace asked.

“It’s a little hard to explain.” They were sitting next to each other, both facing forward. “I’d rather just show it to you, if that’s okay.”

Carl Vespa had been the first lost parent to loom over her hospital bed. When Grace first came out of the coma, his was the first face she saw. She had no idea who he was, where she was, what day it was. More than a week was gone from her memory banks. Carl Vespa ended up sitting in her hospital room for days on end, sleeping in the chair next to her. He made sure that plenty of flowers surrounded her. He made sure that she had a good view, soothing music, enough pain medication, private nursing. He made sure that once Grace was able to eat, the hospital staff didn’t give her the standard slop.

He never asked her for details of that night because, in truth, she really could not provide any. Over the next few months they talked for countless hours. He told her stories, mostly about his failures as a father. He had used his connections to get into her hospital room that first night. He had paid off security—interestingly enough, the security firm at the hospital was actually controlled by organized crime—and then he had simply sat with her.

Eventually other parents followed his lead. It was weird. They wanted to be around her. That was all. They found comfort in it. Their child had died in Grace’s presence and it was as if maybe a small part of their souls, their forever-lost son or daughter, somehow still lived inside of her. It made no sense and yet Grace thought that maybe she understood.

These heartbroken parents came to talk about their dead children, and Grace listened. She figured that she owed them at least that much. She knew that these relationships were probably unhealthy, but there was no way she could turn them away. The truth was, Grace had no family of her own. She’d thrived, for a little while at least, on the attention. They needed a child; she needed a parent. It wasn’t that simple—this malaise of cross-projection—but Grace wasn’t sure she could explain it any better.

The limo headed south on the Garden State Parkway now. Cram flipped on the radio. Classical music, a violin concerto from the sound of it, came through the speakers.