Say Nice Things About Detroit Read online

  At the end of the service she and her mother threw dirt on the graves. Carolyn felt the finality of it then. The priest held her as she sobbed. It had always been up to her to be the stoic one, the responsible one, though what she’d done was to run as far away from her family as she could get. Now Dirk and Natalie were dead. It felt as if she’d had some hand in it, as if by her absence she had allowed it to happen.

  • • •

  SHE WAITED TILL almost eleven, then called Marty on his cell, knowing he’d be driving Kevin to camp. It was only eight there, probably cooler than a summer day in Michigan, though it would stay that same lovely temperature for months. It never really got cold. If there was anything she missed about Detroit it was the fall, the special smell the air got as the leaves came alight, then fell. “Football weather,” it was called, a phrase that had no meaning in southern California.

  “Hey,” Marty said. “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” she said. Marty and Kevin had flown back home for work and camp the day after the funeral. Carolyn planned to stay on—“Ten days or so,” she told Marty—to see her mother through.

  “It couldn’t even be good,” Marty said. He’d warned her she wouldn’t make the week and a half, but then again, he’d never much liked her mother, a sentiment that was returned. “He lacks a deep soul,” her mother had warned her before the marriage, but Carolyn had ignored this, as she did all her mother’s warnings.

  She asked to talk to Kevin.

  “Hey, Mom,” the boy said. She was reminded of the Bluetooth, that the boy could hear everything.

  “How’s camp?”

  “Fine.”

  “Doing anything special?” She waited for the reply, but the call had been dropped. This was how it was in the cell age; so many conversations ended without a goodbye.

  • • •

  BACK IN THE kitchen, her mother was still sitting at the table in her bathrobe, making no attempt to get up or even read the paper. Carolyn asked her if she wanted to go for a drive.

  “No, but you go. I’ll be fine.”

  “It would do you good to get out,” Carolyn said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Carolyn considered whether to counter this challenge and decided against it. She could pretend her mother was always right until she went home to California.

  The day was bleached white, a high, bright cloud layer seeming to make everything fuzzy. The rental car was a Mazda—unfathomable in the old days, a rental agency in Detroit renting a Japanese model—and she drove it down Telegraph. Her knowledge of the area had faded; she’d left at eighteen for good. She decided to go to Hancock Street to see the place where her brother and sister died. She thought she might be able to move on better if she could see the spot. She hadn’t seen Natalie in almost two years, not since she and Marty had bought Natalie a plane ticket to L.A. On that trip they’d promised to stay in better touch, but it hadn’t happened. Carolyn should have made more effort, and now she wouldn’t get the chance.

  She crossed Maple, past the old Machus Red Fox, a different restaurant now but still the same building, a kind of memorial to Jimmy Hoffa. His disappearance was part of her history, another big milestone along the route of Detroit’s demise. Close to 12 Mile she exited Telegraph to the right—the car dealers were still here, though now you could buy a Nissan or Toyota, Saab or Volvo, and no one would shout at you or take a sledgehammer to the vehicle while you waited at a red light—and then followed the entrance ramp, first right and then left as the road curved south and east into the city. She felt conscious of her breathing, deep and a little rapid, as she was driving seventy-two in the right-hand lane, past the retaining walls, shredded tires, and trash, a splintered crib, on the shoulder. The seat beside her held a copy of the police report and a MapQuest printout. She flicked down the automatic door locks and drove on.

  She took the Lodge too far, then, realizing it, exited by the river, turning on a street called Randolph, then Gratiot. Soon she was skirting around the new Ford Field and Comerica Park (no more Tiger Stadium in Detroit). She headed back west to Woodward, then Hancock, the street on the report. Not much beauty here, but nothing sinister, just old and empty buildings under the drab sky, a sheet of newspaper cartwheeling down the street, crabgrass growing out of the sidewalks, not a person on them, an empty city street on a completely normal day.

  She approached Cass and the parking lot near the murder spot. Police lights flashed red and blue behind her. She eased the car to the right with two hands on the wheel, ten o’clock and two o’clock, just as she’d been taught as a teenager. The cruiser pulled in behind her.

  The cop and his partner sat in their car a long time; she waited, wondering what she’d done wrong. She hadn’t been speeding; she was sure of that. She had her license, assumed the registration and proof of insurance were in the glovebox. A second police car pulled up. The first policeman got out, walked to her window, and asked for her license, registration, and proof of insurance.

  He studied the California license for a long time.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked finally. He was a large, middle-aged man with a bit of a paunch, evident as he stood at her window. His skin was the deep, rich color of stained maple.

  “I’m trying to get to the corner of Hancock and Cass,” she said.

  The cop looked to his left. Her destination was less than half a block away. “Why?”

  “My brother and sister died there,” she said.

  “You’re saying that the FBI agent, Burton, was your brother?”

  “Same mother,” she explained. It always needed expla-

  nation.

  He waved the other cop car away, then handed her back her license and the other paperwork, which the rental car company had packed up in a plastic zip-lock baggie.

  “Drive up to Cass,” he told her. “Turn right, put your car in the lot. We’ll stay with you. I don’t want you out here alone.”

  The cop’s partner was another black man, older, his hair mixed with gray, frosty curls. She liked these men immediately. They meant to protect her.

  “It’s the middle of the day,” she said.

  “You got the art museum just a couple blocks north, Wayne State’s nearby, but you shouldn’t come down here alone. Not a woman, especially not a blond woman.”

  “You’re asking for trouble,” the older cop said. “Even if it ain’t bad trouble.”

  Soon she was standing with the two men at the corner.

  “How did this happen?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t park here at night,” the older cop said. “No way.”

  “He was waiting for someone,” said the other.

  “And vice versa, it looks like.”

  A thought came to her. “Why did you pull me over?” she asked.

  “You looked lost.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “A white woman in a rental car driving slow around here? That’s lost.”

  “Maybe looking for the art museum,” said the older cop.

  A moment passed, as if to accentuate the basic insincerity of what they were saying.

  “You thought I was here to score,” Carolyn said. “You racial-profiled me.”

  “Whoa, ma’am,” said the younger cop. “None a that. You looked lost. We were just trying to help.” He paused. “Protect and serve. That’s what this is all about, ma’am.”

  “Would you have stopped a black woman here?”

  “A black woman would have been speeding,” he said.

  III

  THE FREE PRESS divulged that the victims were brother and sister, and for a couple days the story moved the mayor’s troubles below the fold. David paced back and forth in front of his kitchen counter, looking at the phone number. He wanted to have an idea what to say; he was bad at speaking on the fly. There was a reason he hadn’t tried to be a litigator. He considered himself especially bad on the phone and often practiced how he thought the conversation might go. Mr
s. Evans, this is David Halpert calling. I read about Dirk and Natalie in the papers. I am so sorry. It’s horrible.

  He felt an obligation to make the call, but he dreaded it. It was the sorrow. He’d had enough with sorrow. He could let his life become an exercise in it—his son, his marriage, his mother, eventually his father, his city—or he could make it otherwise. Cory was dead four years now. Simply to choose to live differently made as much sense as anything.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the Evanses, seven digits. He got an error message. The phone company wanted him to use the new area code.

  A woman answered.

  “Is this Mrs. Evans?”

  “Put me on your do-not-call list,” she said.

  “Mrs. Evans, it’s David Halpert calling.”

  A pause. “David? Natalie’s friend?”

  “Yes. I happen to be in town and, well, I’ve seen the papers and so I’m calling to say I’m very, very sorry. I don’t—”

  “Thank you, David,” she said, saving him. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And your parents?”

  “My dad is good. My mom, she’s having some medical issues.”

  “You give them my best.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Would you like to speak to Carolyn?” she asked.

  “Why, yes, sure,” he said, for no other reason than he didn’t want to say no to Mrs. Evans, nor did he want to talk to her any longer. Carolyn? He’d last seen her when she was sixteen. What would he say to her?

  “David?”

  “Hi, Carolyn.”

  “Do you actually live here?”

  They spent several minutes catching up. She lived in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

  “I think I’d heard you were in Arizona, right?”

  “Denver. But I’m staying a few months, to help my dad with my mom. She’s losing it. Some kind of dementia.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I’m sorry about Natalie. And Dirk. God, I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’ve said it,” she answered. A long, uncomfortable silence followed before Carolyn spoke again. “My sister still talked about you every once in a while.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that,” he said.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. I don’t think she ever got over the lack of that goodbye.”

  “I don’t know that I did, either,” he said. Natalie’s parents had taken her off to school early. Natalie had called, but David didn’t get the message, so that when he showed up to say goodbye, only Carolyn was left at the house. It was eerie talking to her now; she sounded uncannily like her older sister. They both had a way of swallowing the last word of a sentence, a habit that, intentional or not, meant that you had to listen carefully to the very end.

  “Are you free some night to get out for a drink?” he asked. “I know I could use a change of scenery.”

  They agreed on the time—nine o’clock the next night—but not the place, as neither of them knew the area well enough to suggest one. David promised to scout out Birmingham, then call her back with a suitable location.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY he sat in the passenger seat, his father driving thirty-five down Woodward. David wanted to say something, but his father was keeping the car in the lane and everyone else was passing them easily enough.

  “I want you to call my lawyer,” his father said.

  “Steve Bergen? Why?”

  “His son, Peter. He’s about your age, I’d guess.”

  “What’s it about?” David asked.

  “A job,” Sol said.

  “You’re going back to work?”

  “No, they need someone like you.”

  “You know, Dad, I’m already a partner in a law firm. I mean, I appreciate the suggestion, but . . .” Just like the old man, he thought, always nudging, a true marine, never happy just to hold the ground he had.

  “But what?”

  “Move back to Detroit? For good? What about my job? My life in Denver?”

  “You should move back.”

  “Why would anyone move here?”

  “It’s your home, for one thing. Your family is here.”

  “You and Mom.”

  “What,” his father said, “we don’t count? And the other thing, just as important? You need to get out of Denver.”

  David sat in silence. Every once in a while his father said something that made sense, like a savant who could cut through to the simple truth: he needed to leave Denver. Till now he hadn’t thought of Detroit.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT DAVID waited for Carolyn at the bar. The bartender, young, hair spiked, came over with a What’ll-it-be look. Here David was, forty-five, and he still hadn’t settled on a usual drink. He ordered a gin and tonic, the first thing that came into his mind.

  He had chosen this bar by walking the streets of Birmingham. His mistake was not to look for a TV. This bar didn’t have one, and so now he was sitting alone, with nothing to do and nowhere to look except at the mirror behind the infantry lines of liquor bottles.

  His mother, he’d learned that afternoon, had moved up to first on the waiting list at the nursing home. His father had entrusted him (enlisted him, really) to take her out there next week, to show her around. It was hard to know how she’d take this. He expected the worst, but so far she seemed resigned to the idea, or perhaps unable to comprehend it.

  “Another?” asked the bartender.

  “Sure,” David replied, trying to approximate a drinker. He had a brief memory of Cory, a waking nightmare that flared up now and again. He shook his head to rid himself of the feeling; it always took some kind of physical effort.

  He turned to survey the bar, expecting to find Carolyn, now fifteen minutes late. Natalie was always punctual, but he’d known her when she was young and perhaps didn’t know better. And then Carolyn surprised him.

  “Haven’t been here in years,” she said as she slid onto the stool next to him.

  “Carolyn.” He wouldn’t have recognized her. She was still blond, but her hair was shorter and she’d filled out into a woman, more attractive than the spindly teenager she’d been. She wore designer jeans and a white blouse. After an awkward pause, they accomplished a lopsided hug, both of them teetering on the edge of their bar stools.

  “Getcha something?” the bartender asked. “He’s two up on you.”

  She studied David’s gin and tonic. “Bushmills, straight up,” she said.

  David looked at his drink in a new, feminine light. Still, he didn’t like whiskey enough. Perhaps vodka. Or just red wine. Red wine was acceptable.

  He noticed her hands on the bar, the same long fingers he remembered Natalie having, except Carolyn wore a wedding ring, the yellow diamond almost bursting from the band.

  “You’re married,” he said.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I was once. Not now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be,” he told her. “I’m beginning to see the advantage of being single.”

  “Which is?”

  “Only one person to make happy.”

  Her drink arrived and she raised it for a toast. Their glasses clinked. “So, how’s it going?” she asked.

  “With what?”

  “Keeping that one person happy.”

  Well enough, he allowed, and then changed the subject. He was pretty sure women liked him because he listened. It came to him naturally, and he’d honed it from years of estate planning, when he would sit and listen to people say what they wanted till they got tired of listening to themselves lie. Then he’d draw up a plan that pleased the person paying the bill.

  Her husband was a lawyer, intellectual property. Carolyn herself worked in advertising. At home they had daily help, a woman from El Salvador. Carolyn’s son went to private school. These were the details from L.A. “You can play tennis outside in January,” she said.


  “Do you?”

  “I did, once.”

  “Tell me about your son,” he said.

  He studied her while she talked, the angular face, the golden hair, the perfect white line of her teeth. He felt something. He didn’t want to, but he did. The implications of this were so uniformly unsettling that he ordered another drink, this time a glass of cabernet, which seemed manly enough, despite its French name.

  Carolyn said, “It’s a little weird, being here with you.”

  “How so?”

  “ ’Cause I think I had a crush on you when I was . . . well, a little girl. I was jealous of my sister because she had you.”

  “I’m flattered,” he said.

  “It was about Natalie. I was always jealous of her. She was older, more beautiful. But it wasn’t a bad jealousy. I looked up to her.”

  “She wasn’t more beautiful.”

  She looked down. “You’re sweet,” she said. He thought perhaps that she blushed. Her modesty touched him. Maybe her beauty was something her husband no longer commented on. It was possible, he knew, to disappear in a marriage.

  “You must miss Natalie,” he said.

  She nodded, and looked down. “Terribly,” she said. “There was so much—” She stopped talking.

  “What?”

  “So much left for us to do,” she said. “And Dirk, too. Really, I barely knew him.”

  “Didn’t he ever live with you?”

  Dirk, she said, had lived with his father. This was agreed upon by his parents, the obvious choice to them when they split up, because Dirk was black. Dirk’s father, though, was indifferent at best, and Dirk was really raised by his father’s oldest friend, adopted every way but legally. The FBI was Dirk’s idea. “He wanted to set the world right, get everyone in line,” said Carolyn. “That’s what Natalie always said.”

  “What were Natalie and Dirk doing the night they were killed?”

  “No one knows. They spent a lot of time together after her marriage ended. Dirk’s daughter was out of college. Shelly, his wife, likes her space. Nat and Dirk kept each other company. My mother liked it that they had a friendship. She felt things with her family were finally coming together. Except I wasn’t there.”

  David nodded. He felt a longing, a terrible ache for his son, so he smiled.